PRESENTING OREGON:

FORMATIVE FORCES OF

THE OREGON UNIT OF THE FEDERAL

THEATRE PROJECT

by

DAMOND G. MORRIS

A DISSERTATION

Presented to the Department of Theater Arts and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

June 2013

DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE

Student: Damond G. Morris

Title: Presenting Oregon: Formative Forces of the Oregon Unit of the Federal Theatre Project

This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Theater Arts by:

Theresa J. May Chairperson John B. Schmor Member Louise Westling Member Ted Toadvine Outside Member

and

Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research and Innovation Dean of the Graduate School

Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School.

Degree awarded June 2013

ii

© 2013 Damond G. Morris

iii

DISSERTATION ABSTRACT

Damond G. Morris

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Theater Arts

June 2013

Title: Presenting Oregon: Formative Forces of the Oregon Unit of the Federal Theatre Project

During the Great Depression President Roosevelt’s New Deal brought relief to

Americans through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The Federal Theatre

Project (FTP) was formed in 1935 under the WPA to lift spirits, educate, entertain, and put unemployed theatre artists to work. The FTP was national in scope, but administered at the state level. In the State of Oregon, former Portland Civic Theatre director, Bess Whitcomb, pulled together theatre professionals qualified for work relief to form the Oregon Unit.

Ironically, the first productions of the Oregon Unit were not examples of Whitcomb’s legitimate theatre work with the Portland Civic, but an expedient recouping of older forms.

Vaudevillians were the first unemployed actors hired by the Oregon Unit because they qualified for relief and were ready to place their talents in front of an audience.

This study historicizes the productions of the Oregon Unit of the Federal

Theatre Project from 1936 to 1939 and examines the way its leadership negotiated with three forces existing in Portland and the Pacific Northwest. The forces include: the tradition of vaudeville, made up of unemployed professionals; the Little Theatre movement, through Bess Whitcomb’s relationship with the Portland Civic Theatre; and finally, the government, at the state and federal level, which used the Oregon Unit as a mechanism of propaganda, to produce regionally based theatre which promoted the

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agenda of the New Deal while representing Oregon to Oregonians. Whitcomb negotiated

through these forces to create a wildly popular vaudeville-based performance group. The vaudeville nature of the troupe conflicted with a need on the part of the FTP nationally to present “legitimate” scripted performances. The need to produce legitimate theatre brought Whitcomb to transform the Oregon Unit and start a “rehabilitation” program for the vaudevillians, effectively purging the vaudeville performance style. The legitimate mission placed Whitcomb in the middle of negotiations to create a WPA Art Center in

Portland. This study places Whitcomb’s negotiation in context of the Great Depression, and calls for a re-centering of her position as a theatrical pioneer in Portland, Oregon.

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CURRICULUM VITAE

NAME OF AUTHOR: Damond G. Morris

GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:

University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington Skagit Valley College, Mount Vernon, Washington

DEGREES AWARDED:

Doctor of Philosophy, Theatre Arts, 2013, University of Oregon Master of Arts, Theatre Arts, 2008, Western Washington University Bachelor of Arts, Theatre Arts, 1992, Western Washington University Associate of Arts, Theatre Arts, 1989, Skagit Valley College

AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:

Theatre History Eco-critical Theory Intersections of Theatre Arts and the Environment Sustainable Practice in Theatre Arts Directing Actor training

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Technical Director, Western Washington University, 2005-06 Introduction to Stagecraft Advanced Puppetry

Adjunct instructor, Skagit Valley College, 2006-08 Playing Shakespeare Acting I and II Introduction to Dramatic Literature Introduction to Directing

Technical Director, Seattle University, 1999-2004 Introduction to Stagecraft

Artistic Director, Shakespeare NorthWest, 2006-08

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Producer, Western Washington Shakespeare Festival, 2001-‘04

GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS:

Outstanding Journal Article, Willamette Valley Voices, 2013

Certificate of Merit- Directing, Awake and Sing! , KC/ACTF 2012

Glen Starlin Research Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2011, 2012

Marks Family Scholarship, University of Oregon, 2009 – 2012

Miller Fund Travel Grant, University of Oregon, 2010, 2011

Alumni Gift Fund Scholarship, University of Oregon, 2011

PUBLICATIONS:

Damond Morris. “Mount Angel’s Flax Harvest Festival and the WPA: Weaving Vaudeville into the Fabric of the Willamette Valley.” 2013. Willamette Valley Voices. vol. II, February.

Damond Morris. “Power and Columbia River politics, The theatrical production of the Living Newspaper Power by the Oregon Unit of the Federal Theatre Project.” 2013. Willamette Valley Voices. vol. III, Fall.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful for the guidance of my dissertation committee, Professors John

Schmor, Molly Westling and Ted Toadvine. It is with deep appreciation that I thank the

head of my committee, Dr. Theresa May, whose guidance and focus during personally

hard times allowed me to find my argument and, “Just say it!” I came to the University of

Oregon to study with Dr. May, and I look forward to working with her as a colleague. I would also like to acknowledge Sara Freeman, who helped ignite the dissertation topic and my love of theatre history. I extend appreciation to the professors who guided me through the Oregon Leadership in Sustainability Masters Certificate: Vicki Elmer, Robert

Young, Brook Muller, Peter Walker and Brendan Bohanan. I thank the Theatre Arts

Office Manager, May-Britt Jeremiah, who was always there to help. I would like to express gratitude to Andy Friedlander, who gave me the opportunity to begin this theatre journey. The archival work for this writing would not have been possible without the help of University of Oregon Library Microforms Coordinator, Tamera Vidos, the staff at the

Oregon Historical Society and Willamette Heritage Center, Timberline Lodge historian

Sarah Munro and my sister, Lynelle Brode who trudged through the National Archives in

Washington, D.C. for her brother. I would also like to thank editor Brian Cook who asked many hard questions and helped open up the idea of “negotiation.”

This document would simply not be possible without the support and love of my wife, Laura. She has always supported my crazy endeavors, from the Shakespeare

Festival to a PhD, with love and understanding. It was a difficult five years. I love you so much! I would also like to thank my daughter, Zinnia, who was always ready to give her papa a hug when he needed it most… thank you, Pooka.

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For Bess

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Notes ...... 15

II. SLOPING WEST TO THE BARD: HOW VAUDEVILLE SHAPED THE

NASCENT OREGON UNIT OF THE FTP ...... 17

The Common Values of Vaudeville and the Oregon Unit ...... 21

Ernest Carrier: Working Class Aesthetics ...... 29

Values of the FTP Reinscribe Ethnicity in the City of Portland ...... 31

Night Beat: An Unemployed Working Class Story ...... 36

Sloping West: A Play with Regional Values ...... 41

Into the Parks: Shrew Serves the East Side ...... 47

Notes ...... 55

III. THE MAKING OF THE MODEL UNIT ...... 59

Merging Little Theatre Amateurs with Professional Vaudevillians ...... 60

National Attention Transforms Vaudevillians ...... 71

“Rehabilitation” Through Children’s Theatre ...... 75

An Art Center Stumbling Block ...... 78

The Elks Temple Theatre: A Legitimate Step to the Art Center ...... 81

The Art Center Agreement Moves Forward ...... 84

The Grass Roots Theatre and the FTP ...... 87

Notes ...... 90

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Chapter Page

IV. COOPERATIVE FARMING TO ANTI-UNION RHETORIC: WHITCOMB’S

LEFT TO RIGHT NEGOTIATION OF THE OREGON UNIT ...... 94

The Yellow Harvest: Cooperative Propaganda ...... 98

Tapestry in Linen: Changing from Propaganda to WPA History ...... 104

Power: Socialist Propaganda for the Bonneville Dam ...... 109

Paul Bunyan Helps the Oregon Unit Fall to the Right ...... 118

When a Tree Falls in the Forest ...... 127

Notes ...... 133

V. CONCLUSION ...... 138

The Oregon Unit Influence Ideas About Theatre in Portland ...... 142

Community Partnerships ...... 145

Forward-Moving Careers ...... 147

Bess Whitcomb: Portland’s Theatrical Pioneer ...... 149

Future Areas of Study ...... 152

Notes ...... 158

APPENDICES ...... 161

A. OREGON UNIT OF THE FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT:

PERFORMANCE CHRONOLOGY, 1936-39 ...... 161

B. OREGON UNIT PERSONNEL ...... 193

C. OREGON UNIT PERFORMANCE LOCATIONS ...... 199

D. ARCHIVES ...... 204

REFERENCES CITED ...... 207

xi CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

“The Federal Theatre at its best was working toward an art in which each region and eventually each state would have its unique, indigenous dramatic expression, its company housed in a building reflecting its own landscape and regional materials, producing plays of its past and present, in its own rhythm of speech and its native design, in an essentially American pattern.” Hallie Flanagan, Arena1

In an address to Congress in 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) outlined an aggressive plan to get the country back to work. The Emergency Relief

Appropriations Act of 1935 passed by Congress set out to rebuild the country and preserve “not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self- respect, their self-reliance and courage and determination.”2 The bill also brought FDR’s relief efforts under the department of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). WPA

Director, Harry Hopkins, included the arts as part of the WPA plan to revitalize the economy, forming the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) in 1935 to lift spirits, educate, entertain, and most importantly put unemployed theatre artists and technicians to work.

Started in August of 1935, the FTP was the first and only federally – organized, funded and executed theatre in the history of the United States. The FTP was unique among national theatres, such as those found in the capitols of Europe, because it did not consist of a central theater building. It was instead a regionally-based group of federally-funded theatres operated and administered at the state level. This structure led to a great deal of autonomy for state FTP directors, who worked under a branch of the WPA titled Federal

1

Project Number One, or “Federal One.”

Hopkins appointed Hallie Flanagan, professor of English at Vassar College and

director of the Vassar Experimental Theatre, to head the FTP. Flanagan brought

leadership, vision, passion, and a new theatrical aesthetic to the FTP, informed by her

study of the “new stagecraft” inspired by European and Russian theatre forms. She

gained notoriety early in her career as the first woman to receive a Guggenheim

Fellowship, which gave her the opportunity to tour and write about the theatres of Europe

and Russia. 3 Flanagan did not come from the professional theatre, but from the halls of academia where she freely experimented with European theatre forms such as German

Expressionism and auteur director Gordon Craig’s work with Symbolism. Her experimental theatrical work at Vassar College, the popularity of her play Can You Hear

Their Voices, produced at several regional American theatres, and her friendship with

Hopkins, gave Flanagan instant credibility. As Barry Witham writes, Flanagan “believed

in the idea of a Federal Theatre,” and she also believed in the power of theatre to change society.4 Her ability to imagine the possibilities of the FTP, and to deliver a plan for implementation, was the reason Hopkins made her FTP Director.

Flanagan decentralized the FTP, dividing the organization into states run by state

directors with oversight and guidance provided by regional directors. This meant that

state directors administered FTP rules and regulations created by administrators in

Washington, D.C. with regional assistance. State WPA administrators were in charge of

divvying up federal WPA funds, with FTP state directors in charge of personnel, budget,

and theatre programming. Larger FTP Units in cities such as New York and Los Angeles

had their own directors, while smaller FTP Units, like the Oregon Unit, often covered a

2

wide geographic area, traveling great distances to entertain around the state. The FTP was

the largest of the Federal One divisions (accounting for just one percent of the total WPA

budget at its height) and the scope of the project was vast.5 Across the nation, in 40 cities

over 22 states, theatrical units of unemployed workers from the entertainment industry

performed in: children’s theatre; puppet and marionette theatre; dance theatre; American

pageants; radio drama; language drama in Yiddish, Italian, Spanish, French and German;

African-American theatre (Negro Unit); modern drama; Civilian Conservation Corp

(CCC) theatre; the Living Newspaper; circus and vaudeville.6 Flanagan’s theatrical

aesthetic influenced many of her state director appointments, but she left the hiring of the

state director of the Oregon Unit to Oregon WPA Administrator, E.J. Griffith.7 To lead

the Oregon Unit, Griffith hired Bess Whitcomb, a theatrical force in Portland and the

only woman to hold a state director position in the FTP.

Whitcomb was a prominent and popular leader within the Portland theatre

community in the 1920s, and like Flanagan, early in her career, worked in academia. A

Midwesterner from Illinois, she graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio, trained at a dramatic academy in Boston, and moved with her husband, a decorated war hero, to

Oregon to teach at Portland’s Reed College in the early 1920s.8 At Reed College, she

worked in a government post-war G.I. education program and began freelance directing

in high schools and at Albany College (now Lewis and Clark) through 1926. She co-

founded the Art Theatre Players in 1926, directing their first full season of plays, and

later created the Bess Whitcomb Players in 1928 under her direction as well. The two

theatre companies merged in 1929 to form the Portland Civic Theatre (Portland Civic).9

Although she resigned as Director of the Art Theatre Players in 1927 and as a leader in

3

the Portland Civic in 1930, she remained a prominent acting instructor in the Portland

Civic Theatre School and returned to direct an outdoor production of Alice in

Wonderland for the Portland Rose Festival in 1934 and ‘35.10 Her prominence as a

Portland Civic stage director and administrative negotiation with the City of Portland in the Rose Festival, prompted Griffith to hire her as the state director of the FTP in 1936, a post she retained until June of 1939, when an act of Congress closed the FTP.*

This study will historicize the productions of the Oregon Unit of the Federal

Theatre Project from 1936 to 1939 and will examine the way their leadership, under

Whitcomb and Griffith, negotiated three forces existing in Portland and the Pacific

Northwest at the time of its formation. These three forces: vaudeville, the Little Theatre

movement, and government, both at the state and federal level, were present when the

Unit formed and were constantly working on the production and personnel choices within

the troupe. The three forces dominate important decisions Whitcomb made, often turning

the entire company of 55 actors, stagehands and administrators in entirely new directions.

This study will isolate the three forces in order to understand how Whitcomb negotiated

the Oregon Unit’s survival during the Great Depression.

The tradition of vaudeville was central to the study because unemployed

professional vaudevillians desperate for work made up a majority of the Oregon Unit actors. The zenith of the West Coast vaudeville circuits passing through the large downtown theatre palaces of Portland in the 1920s declined as the downtown palaces

* Whitcomb (1887-1976) worked in the WPA Arts Project for a short time after the FTP closed in 1939 and before she pursued her Master’s Degree from the University of Iowa, under department chair E. C. Mabie, who figures prominently in this writing. After completing her Master’s Degree Whitcomb worked as an acting instructor for the Gellar Theatre School in Los Angeles for many years, where she trained several Hollywood stars. She was one of the first professors hired at Diablo Valley College, a junior college in Walnut Creek, CA at the age of 66, where she worked until months before her death in at 89 years of age.

4

transformed from live vaudeville entertainment to film. By 1936, there was one surviving

vaudeville house in Portland, the Capitol, which primarily featured comedians and

dancers from the East Coast. The West Coast circuit vaudevillians who called Portland

home after the collapse of the vaudeville industry in the beginning of the 1930s, had few

prospects for employment, but when the FTP formed in 1935, their employment history

qualified them for work relief. An eclectic band of actors with theatrical experience

included aerialists, jugglers, dancers, a clown, a strongman, a whistler, and singers. It was

from this diverse pool of talent that Whitcomb chose the initial company, and their talents

brought entertainment immediately to schools, halls, auditoriums and clubs around

Portland. The first productions of the Oregon Unit were not examples of Whitcomb’s

work with the Portland Civic or the Bess Whitcomb Players, but an expedient recouping

of older forms (and older actors). The marriage of vaudeville performers to the Oregon

Unit defined the type of productions that they could mount and Whitcomb began putting

the vaudevillians together in wildly popular vaudeville productions.

Whitcomb descended from the tradition of the Little Theatre movement in

Portland, which was part of a larger movement around the country during the Progressive

Era. Little theatres were designed to be staunchly non-commercial, producing theatre and

new plays that were topical, socially significant, and strived for the betterment of

society.11 Although there were as many reasons for the theatres to form as there were

Little Theatres, the people involved in the movement saw a need for theatre in their

communities, or as Dorothy Chansky writes, the need to create “a public belief in the

importance of theatre in civic and personal life.”12 The creation of the Art Theatre, the

Bess Whitcomb Players, and finally the Portland Civic in the 1920s focused on the

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enrichment of society through theatre art and, therefore, was part of a national Little

Theatre “multipronged phenomenon” during the Progressive Era.

The Little Theatre movement in Portland filled a void in live theatre performance following the collapse of commercial stock theatres such as the Baker Stock

Company, the Dufwinn Players, and the Helig Theatre chain (from Eugene, OR to

Spokane, WA). Many of the Portland elite who popularized Portland’s stock companies supported the Little Theatre tradition in Portland. The financial support and artistic personnel of Little Theatres, like the Portland Civic, came from the upper class, and their audiences often served the upper class. Companies like the Art Theatre and the Portland

Civic had a very specific expectation that for theatre to be “high-art” it must be text- based “legitimate” performance. The notion of legitimate theatre dates back to England’s

Licensing Act of 1737, which gave permission for “illegitimate” theatres to perform melodramas and music hall entertainment, outside of the two licensed legitimate theatres in London. Within the context of the Little Theatre movement of the 1920s and 30s, the word “legitimate” referred to theatre based on a play text that was not variety or vaudeville performance. The Little Theatre movement is vital in understanding the tension Whitcomb faced personally as she worked with the distinctly non-text based vaudevillians, who were often naturally gifted and learned their craft kinesthetically from other vaudevillians. Whitcomb’s negotiations with the Portland Civic, which runs through the entire Oregon Unit timeline, were tainted by Little Theatre elitism on the part of the Portland Civic Board of Directors that stemmed from a Little Theatre preference for legitimate theatre, viewing vaudeville as ‘lowbrow’ performance.

Many administrators from the Little Theatre Movement worked in the FTP and

6 brought an ethical obligation to continue the work of the Little Theatre: create socially significant drama, promote new works, and make a difference in the community. This belief permeates speeches given by Flanagan about the FTP, saying, “no person can work effectively in the Federal Theatre unless he cares increasingly about the theme engaging science and industry today—that is, a better life for more people.”13 Whitcomb’s artistic expectations of the Oregon Unit came from her Little Theatre tradition, with all of the trappings found in the Portland Civic Board of Directors. Whitcomb aesthetically desired the “high-art” and serious drama presented by the Portland Civic, but had to present

Oregon Unit performances developed around the specialized talents of vaudevillians.

With many FTP administrators across the country coming from the Little Theatre

Movement at the national level, the FTP stressed the need for regional units to retrain, or

“rehabilitate” vaudevillians for the legitimate stage, moving away from what was perceived as “lowbrow” performance. As the Oregon Unit moved closer to legitimate performances, the Oregon Unit vaudevillians appeared in fewer and fewer productions, but with the popularity of vaudeville in Portland, Whitcomb found moving completely away from vaudeville “schtick” proved to be a difficult task.

The government at the federal level under the FTP administration used the

Oregon Unit as a mechanism of propaganda to promote the New Deal agenda that was distinctly left-of-center in the politically conservative state of Oregon in the 1930s. There was little national oversight of the Oregon Unit for the first year of operation, but in 1937 the FTP Summer Theatre Conference brought Whitcomb’s work into the national spotlight. Her willingness to make the troupe into a testing ground for new FTP ideas moved the troupe towards her legitimate theatre goals, while eliminating jobs for the

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original vaudevillians that brought the Oregon Unit into prominence. The administration

nationally used the Oregon Unit to promote their agenda, which by 1939 was moving

from the political left to the political right.

The state WPA administration represented by Griffith used the Oregon Unit as

propaganda to highlight WPA programs that were helping Oregonians. Anti-New Deal

Democrats in Oregon and the conservative wing of the House of Representatives in

Congress saw the New Deal platform as communist and wanted to eliminate any hint of

“red” activity in the WPA, starting with the FTP. This political backdrop is vital in

understanding Whitcomb’s negotiation over the course of the Oregon Unit, supporting

the liberal plays selected nationally for the troupe by the FTP, while appealing to the

conservative politics within the state of Oregon.

The three forces, vaudeville, the Little Theatre movement and government, were

“formative” like a volcano, pushing the Oregon Unit into shape through constant change.

The three forces shaped the plays and performances, the type of sponsoring organizations

and supporters Whitcomb was able to generate, the personnel from vaudeville to

legitimate, the troupe performance venue and, finally, the dream of what the Oregon Unit could become. Just when the troupe seemed to settle, performing vaudeville, gaining legitimate talent for scripted productions, or conforming to FTP administration, an eruption from one of the three forces would create a new landscape for Whitcomb to negotiate. By separating the forces this study will allow analysis of how each piece pushed on the other to form the Oregon Unit.

Chapter Two paints a picture of Whitcomb’s struggle shaping the vaudevillians in the Oregon Unit to achieve Hallie Flanagan’s agenda within the FTP. The chapter

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contextualizes the West Coast vaudevillians that made up the Oregon Unit against the

history of vaudeville, as popular entertainment in Portland. Viewed within the Portland

theatre community as “low art” because of its vaudeville roots, the Oregon Unit fought

for recognition. Whitcomb had to hire actors qualified for WPA relief, and national FTP rules only qualified recently employed actors. As a result, vaudevillians from circuits running through Oregon were the only actors recently employed, while talented actors working for Whitcomb and the Little Theatre movement were unpaid, pursuing “art for art’s sake.”† The vaudevillians were consummate professionals—out of work like many

Americans, while the WPA considered actors and technicians from the Little Theatre

Movement “amateur,” pursuing theatre as an unpaid art, as many in the Little Theatre

movement did in the 1920s. My investigation follows the class biases implicit in the

distinctions between “professional” and “amateur,” and shows how these class-based

tensions shaped the organizational structure and artistic products of the Oregon Unit

The Oregon Unit’s vaudeville performance at the formation of the company

identified a performance style, but the lack of a theatrical home led, ironically, to the

Unit’s connection to Portland’s East Side neighborhoods, grounding the performers in the

working class. I argue that the Oregon Unit retained performers because of a connection

to Portland’s East Side working class. Many in the Unit lived in neighborhoods on

Portland’s East Side, where former middle class families were struggling to pay bills and

were losing their homes due to foreclosure in middle of the Great Depression. The

† An article in Time magazine in 1935 places the 300 agit-prop plays exploding across the country against the Little Theatre movement’s productions of the 1920s, with the conclusion that in 1935, at the beginning of the FTP, the artists were hungry for more than art for art’s sake, and needed a meaning behind their art. (Time. “The Theatre: Agit-Prop” June 17, 1935.) The phrase here refers to members of the community in the Portland Civic, who were creating theatre without a profit motive, purely for the sake of working together and creating great art. 9 vaudevillians of the Oregon Unit served these working families by performing lighthearted comedy, acrobatics and acts that astounded the young and old alike primarily in parks serving East Side communities. With their action and service, the men and women of the Oregon Unit were a part of the labor movement: as members of the unemployed, as residents of the East Side, and as relief from the weary reality of the labor struggle in Oregon.

Chapter Three follows how competing national and local forces used the Oregon

Unit’s position to build an Art Center in Portland and become the training ground for the rehabilitation of vaudevillians. The Oregon Unit was shaped into a “model” FTP Unit by sometimes converging and sometimes conflicting national and regional aims. Many of these aims centered primarily on securing an indoor venue and creating solutions to national FTP problems, stemming from a perceived lack of talent (by administrators) in the smaller Units. Whitcomb worked with top administrators in the FTP on ideas to strengthen the talent pool of smaller units, while using the Oregon Unit as an FTP testing ground. The WPA rewarded her ideas and experimentation by moving the Unit into the

Elks Temple Theatre in downtown Portland and supporting Griffith’s plans for a permanent WPA Art Center Theatre. As notoriety of the Oregon Unit increased so did the

Griffith’s focus on his plan for a WPA Art Center and State Theatre, which would be a partnership between the Oregon Unit, the Portland Civic and the University of Oregon.14

With Congress threatening to defund the FTP, Whitcomb saw the Arts Center as a potential lasting legacy to theatre arts in Oregon.

While plans for the Art Center moved forward, under the direction of Whitcomb, the Oregon Unit proceeded to transform into a model FTP theatre according to Flanagan.

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By borrowing actors, technicians and managers from larger FTP Units like San Francisco and Los Angeles, the Oregon Unit produced legitimate (script-based) drama, children’s theatre, and Living Newspaper productions. As the Oregon Unit performed a role on the national stage as a model FTP theatre with a large permanent home, the pressure from the

FTP administration in Washington, D.C. increased. The help that Whitcomb needed to move the company into legitimacy meant borrowing directors and prominent actors from larger units, which removed vaudevillians from performances. By conforming and embracing the demands of the national FTP administration, Whitcomb created a resource and testing ground for new administrative ideas.

Chapter Four tracks the trajectory of change in Oregon Unit New Deal propaganda from its formation, with plays like The Yellow Harvest, to the last planned performance of Paul Bunyan. As a vehicle of New Deal propaganda the Oregon Unit produced the “leftist” production Power, which calls for the adoption of municipal power distribution across the country. As the House on Un-American Activities Committee

(HUAC), began its attack on communism in the ranks of the FTP, the Oregon Unit changed its productions to “right-of-center” or apolitical plays. Propaganda in the plays

Power and The Yellow Harvest are set against the historically based Tapestry in Linen, and anti-union character of Paul Bunyan. All of the productions supported New Deal programs in Oregon, such as the WPA, Public Works Administration (PWA) and the

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), but the message changed in response to the HUAC investigation and conservative politics in the State of Oregon.

This study responds in part to Barry Witham’s call for additional close studies of regional FTP units, and builds on the analysis of Elizabeth Osborne’s chapter

11

dedicated to the Oregon Unit in Staging the People. Digging up archival information

about the Oregon Unit proved difficult. Controversy surrounding the FTP, in productions

such as Orson Welles and John Houseman’s The Cradle Will Rock in New York and the

Ethiopia censorship outcry and ultimate resignation of Elmer Rice, left a goldmine of

correspondence in the National Archive in Washington, D.C. The relatively small and

quiet Oregon Unit left less of a trace and has required archival research beyond the

National Archive. Osborne, in her first article about the Oregon Unit, (what she calls the

“Portland unit,”) states:

Unlike the New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Boston units, which generated controversy so continuously, the Portland unit seldom required FTP officials to mediate or intervene in its activities, which meant that records for such exchanges were never created in the central administrative records.15

Past historians looking into the Oregon Unit, such as Osborne and Karen Wickre, had a

rough chronology, but were unable to provide a clear production history of the company.

16 Flanagan’s attempt at completely cataloging the work of the FTP in Arena gives a

general overview of the Oregon Unit, while missing many productions because of her

vaudeville bias and lack of information from Whitcomb to FTP administrative offices in

Washington D.C. The lack of information and the need to fill the historical gaps created a

need to find information at the local level. The University of Oregon’s central location in

the state and vast Oregon newspaper archive has provided the opportunity to uncover

information throughout the state. Local sources of information provide a treasure-trove of accurate information about the workings of a local theatre. Creating a clear historic picture through local sources, what University of Oregon associate professor Theresa

May calls a “methodology of place,” helped paint a clearer picture of how the FTP

functioned, how it reflected local values while responding to national (centralized)

12 dictates, and how it balanced local talent with a new national sensibility among its artistic leaders.17 Through a methodology of place, which places central significance on local archives and the political and aesthetic choices they reveal, I will show how the class battles within Portland’s political and social landscape transformed the fledgling Oregon

Unit.

Whitcomb was instrumental in the success of the Oregon Unit and this study constantly questions her motives. Theatre historian Thomas Postlewait points out how agents like Whitcomb shape the writing of history,

The specific statements of agents carry their local, even unique meanings, yet in an accumulative manner the historian may be able to trace how the thoughts and motives of agents, as expressed in their statements, may participate in expansive conditions and contests of ideologies, mentalities, discourses, belief systems, and philosophies that operate within and sometimes across an era.18

Whitcomb was the primary agent in the Oregon Unit, and the “accumulative manner” in which this study uses her words has provided a window into the formation of smaller

FTP Units and the social and political arena of theatre in Portland during the Great

Depression. Her Midwestern background, allegiance to Hallie Flanagan’s FTP mission, and personal frustration with her cast and crew are central to the story. Primary sources containing her voice include the E.C. Mabie papers at the University of Iowa, which contained personal correspondence by Whitcomb about the Oregon Unit, as well as the

Portland Civic Theatre archive at the Oregon Historical Society. Her frantic penmanship and eloquent Midwestern colloquialisms give a sense of the power and command she had over a room. A poignant interview with Whitcomb, the only piece of her archive left at

Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California, where she served as a speech professor from her late 60s to her death at the age of 89, underscores her centrality in the

13

Oregon Unit story. In the Diablo Valley College interview taken from her hospital bed months before her death Whitcomb recalls her negotiation through life. She said,

My theatre, the [Federal Theatre], had its own professional actors, had its own professional stagehands, who were only too grateful to have a job. Had limitless costume department because the sewing project then, which was not one of the arts—but there it was—skilled women who needed the work, were on relief and my problem in budgeting for costumes was material because that cost money. But if I could wrangle the material, I could have all the workers I needed. 19

This study follows Whitcomb’s “wrangling” and her ability to bring disparate talent together, from vaudevillians and legitimate stage actors to Little Theatre and WPA administrators, created a new paradigm of what theatre could be in Portland, Oregon. As

Whitcomb says of her Federal Theatre days, she could “put a play on in a waist basket,” which defines her struggle as Oregon State Director, and her strength as a theatre producer. While the Oregon Unit was comprised of 55 actors, musicians, technicians and administrators, this story will continually fall back to Whitcomb’s presence or absence, asking for her thoughts while making her presence known.

I started this exploration because of my interest in the FTP and my personal connection to the Pacific Northwest. As I dug deeper into the life of Bess Whitcomb, I realized she and I shared many of the same hopes and dreams about how theatre can transform communities during tough economic times. This is a story about how a small troupe of vaudevillians, led by Bess Whitcomb—a Little Theatre leader—could create a model Unit prized by FTP administrators. In America’s darkest hour, the Oregon Unit brought professional theatre back to the stage in Portland, and ignited the dream of an

Oregon State Art Center.

14

Notes

1 Hallie Flanagan, Arena: The Story of the Federal Theatre (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce), 371.

2 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Annual Message to Congress (1/4/1935),” The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14890.

3 Joanne Bentley, Hallie Flanagan: A Life in the American Theatre (New York: Knopf, 1988), 30-31 and 48.

4 Barry Witham, The Federal Theatre Project: A Case Study (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 2.

5 Flanagan, Arena, 44.

6 Ibid, 377-436.

7 Hallie Flanagan, “A Brief Delivered by Hallie Flanagan, Director, Federal Theatre Project, Works Progress Administration, before the Committee on Patents, House of Representatives: Washington, D.C. February 8, 1938,” Library of Congress American Memory, < http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=ftadmin&fileName= farbf/00040002/ ftadmin.db&recNum=2. >

8 Bess Whitcomb, interview by unnamed Diablo Valley College speech instructor, recorded c. 1975 in a hospital room, Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, CA.

9 Cecil Matson, The Way It Was: A Kaleidoscopic Look at Early Theatre in the Oregon Country and A View of the Changing Pattern of Theatre in the Early Years of the Twentieth Century into the Present Day (Portland, Or.: printed by author, 1988), 165- 168.

10 Bess Whitcomb Resignation Letter, August 4, 1927, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, Box 9, Folder 5, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

11 Dorothy Chansky, Composing Ourselves: The Little Theatre Movement and the American Audience (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 2.

12 Chansky, Composing Ourselves, 8.

13 Federal Theatre Project (U.S.), and Pierre de Rohan, Federal Theatre: First Summer Theatre: A Report (New York: Federal National Publications, 1938), 12.

15

14 Letter from Bess Whitcomb to E.C. Mabie, May 28, 1937, Papers of Edward Charles Mabie, Box 2, Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, RG 99.0188, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Iowa.

15 Elizabeth A. Osborne, Staging the People: Community and Identity in the Federal Theatre Project (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 200.

16 Elizabeth Osborne, “Disappearing Frontiers and the National Stage: Placing the Portland Federal Theatre Project,” Theatre History Studies 29 (2009), 103-121.

17 Theresa May, personal conversation, January 15, 2013.

18 Thomas Postlewait, The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 231.

19 Bess Whitcomb, interview by unnamed Diablo Valley College speech instructor, recorded c. 1975 in a hospital room, Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, CA

16

CHAPTER II

SLOPING WEST TO THE BARD:

HOW VAUDEVILLE SHAPED THE NASCENT OREGON UNIT OF THE FTP

“Vaudeville is not only coming back, but it is back.”1 - Dancer Patti Moore, 1937

“Our bill has received enthusiastic acclaim from the Portland public… I am convinced that Portland is vaudeville minded.”2 - Impersonator Syd Chatton

The City of Portland, Oregon, was a vaudeville town. Following the collapse of the vaudeville industry across the nation, and through the darkest economic times of the

Great Depression, vaudeville in Portland hung on, rebounded and thrived. As the depression wore on, commercial interests in vaudeville increased and the number of vaudeville houses grew. This would portend well for the new Federal Theatre Project in

Oregon.* The announcement of the formation of the Federal Theatre in the summer of

1935 as an arm of the WPA meant that administrators were quickly picked to lead the

large government bureaucracy. The challenges were many, including finding

performance venues, artistic and managerial staff, and, most importantly, qualified

performers.

Under the FTP instructions and the rules of the WPA, only skilled professional

actors on the relief rolls qualified for assistance. Across the country, and with the Oregon

Unit, the bulk of these out-of-work performers were vaudevillians. While regional and

* One vaudeville house in Portland, The Capitol, remained opened through the 1930s, with several new houses opening from 1937-39. The Capitol was not a straight vaudeville house – few theatres in the Pacific Northwest ever were – and the later performances ran into the evening, the racier they became. The midnight vaudeville performance at the Capitol often advertised an “East Coast headliner” of a fan, bubble or “exotic” dancer. 17

state WPA administrators faced mountains of red tape that accompanied running a

federally-funded assistance program, hiring vaudevillians into the Oregon Unit solved

one problem: getting productions before the public quickly. Playing to working-class audiences, vaudevillians hired by the Oregon Unit were ready with performances that had already been tested in theatres on the West Coast vaudeville circuit, from San Francisco to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

In this chapter, I argue that the marriage between vaudeville and the FTP was not merely one of convenience. The values of the FTP – regionalism, service to working class audiences, and an emphasis on labor– were aligned with those of vaudeville.

Vaudevillians across the country were used to tailoring their acts as they moved from place to place; they were used to playing in whatever venues were offered and available, and they fed the entertainment appetites of working-class Americans with stories, skits and celebrations of local history and local color. As I will show in the pages that follow, each of these qualities was consistent with the goals of the FTP and would form the fiber of the unit in Oregon. In a speech made to FTP state leaders at a Summer Theatre

Conference in 1937, FTP director Hallie Flanagan observed:

Such a federal theatre places upon us the obligation of studying many things normally ignored by theatre workers. We must know geography—our regional and state differences, tastes, history. We must see how our theatre can give value received to various communities. We must develop the theatre in relation to recreation, industry, therapy. In short, it is only through preserving the local and regional characteristics that we can create a strong Federal Theatre.3

Bess Whitcomb, perhaps more than any other state director of the FTP, took Flanagan’s

regional message to heart, constantly fashioning productions that utilized skilled

vaudevillians to tell the story of Oregon to Oregonians, in productions like Tapestry in

Linen (about the Willamette Valley), Timberline Tintypes (set in an 1890s Oregon dance

18 hall) and Sloping West (about Southern Oregon), rather than simply reproducing shows that had originated in New York. The first Oregon Unit productions consisted of free vaudeville skits in Portland parks, setting a pattern which established the Oregon Unit as one that took performances to the “great outdoors” with ease and vigor.4

Flanagan saw the “problem of vaudeville” as a dead industry, not worth reviving, yet the numbers of unemployed vaudeville professionals flooding the WPA relief rolls could not be ignored. These professionals, much like the professionals working with

Whitcomb in Portland, had a single “shtick” (a Yiddish word meaning bit or piece) around which they made a living, and this single talent did not play well when inserted into legitimate stage performances in the 1930s. The FTP and the Oregon Unit tied themselves to the vaudeville talent available for WPA relief from the first auditions, and this bound the Unit, especially its large cast productions, to a style of performance infused with a vaudeville aesthetic. In Oregon, vaudeville performance had always taken on a distinctly regional flavor. The folk history and factual history of the Pacific

Northwest figured strongly in the vaudeville acts that played Portland and the region from the late 1880s into the 1930s. Because of its vaudevillian roots, the Oregon Unit was characterized by attention to local and regional history and identity. Flanagan’s description of the early Oregon Unit as one consisting of performers from “vaudeville, tab show, and circus” retrained to perform legitimate drama, was accurate.5 Beginning with a vaudeville performance at the Portland Shrine Hospital in June of 1936, and continuing throughout its existence, the Oregon Unit was marked by the aesthetics, players and productions of the West Coast vaudeville circuit.

In his book The Federal Theatre Project: A Case Study, Barry Witham describes

19

the line of applicants, some qualified for relief and some not, auditioning for the Seattle

Federal Theatre Unit as “assorted refugees from the Pantages and Keith-Orpheum vaudeville circuits” who had retired and were trying to resurrect their careers. While the

University of Washington professor organizing the Seattle Federal Theatre, Glenn

Hughes, desired a company dedicated to the production of new plays, he came to realize the talent (i.e., vaudevillians) available could not support such a dream. In order to compensate for the lack of available talent, the Seattle Unit quickly split the company in

two, one unit covering “variety” and the other “revue.” Unlike Hughes, Whitcomb did not split the Oregon actors into vaudeville and legitimate revue units (and, judging from the list of professional variety entertainers in the Oregon Unit, the parade of talent was similar to that of Seattle.) Whitcomb choose instead to work with whoever was

available.6 Chronicling the popularity of the Oregon Unit players with the public, from

the first sketch to their Shakespearian vaudeville, can help define the difficult road to

“legitimate drama” Bess Whitcomb and he troupe had to travel.

Federal Theatre Units across the country moved away from vaudeville performance toward legitimate text-based theatre in the last two years of the Federal

Theatre, and the Oregon Unit was no exception. The FTP wanted legitimate plays, but in the rush to bring theatre to the stage, they settled for vaudeville performances that were performance-ready. The Oregon Unit began the negotiation of replacing vaudeville acts with scripted plays, trying to please the vaudeville performers and audience alike. After only a year, the Oregon Unit would move from performing vaudeville schtick to scripted classics such as Taming of the Shrew and Anton Chekov’s one-act play The Boor.

However, as I will argue, the period of vaudevillian incubation, from 1936 to 1937, was

20

never lost as they moved to legitimate theatre. I will show the forms and values of

vaudeville – thematic, economic and aesthetic –marked the Oregon Unit and would shape

its work in the coming years. How and why this occurred was a product of convenience,

available talent, and synergies between the vaudeville and the goals of the FTP.

The Common Values of Vaudeville and the Oregon Unit

Harry Hopkins’ infamous quote, that the FTP would be “free, adult, and

uncensored,” haunted him as the head of the WPA.7 Censored FTP productions across the country proved the government had the ultimate say in what the FTP could stage.

Productions like Ethiopia and The Cradle Will Rock in New York, or Lysistrata in

Seattle, fell under censorship at the state and federal levels of the WPA, and a fan dancer in the Midwest was removed from an FTP unit for wearing a revealing costume while in the employment of the government.8 Within the vaudeville industry “blue” material, including swear words, such as “God” and “Hell,” as well as bawdy physicality, not allowed with vaudeville’s emphasis on family entertainment. The term blue, meaning

“tawdry,” was taken from the color of the warning cards or envelopes issued by vaudeville managers to performers overstepping the rules of stage conduct.9 If a

performer received a blue envelope, they had to change their routine, and the information

would be wired to the other theatre managers so they too could watch the performer. If

there were repeat violations, the performer and act would no longer be booked in the

circuit, and the word spread quickly through management to other circuits, leading to the

end of a career in the vaudeville industry. State leaders and national WPA representatives

targeted sensitive subject matter and inflammatory conduct from the FTP stage just as

21

vaudeville managers had maintained the rules of conduct for the industry. Censorship

came to protect the reputation of the institution of the WPA and state, just as the blue

envelope protected the institution of vaudeville as family entertainment.

Vaudevillians always found ways to bend the rules however, telling working class jokes that appealed to a portion of their audience, and that was equally true with the

Oregon Unit. Many vaudeville comedians challenged blue material rules using sexual and racial innuendo. The extent of blue material in a given act (how far the comedian could bend the rules) depended on the popularity of the performer. In a similar way, Oregon

Unit vaudevillians tailored the amount of blue material to their working class audiences.

Performers pushed against the established strictures to perform blue material in the company of adults, particularly when performing in clubs or fraternal organizations such as the Masons or the Knights of Pythias where the audience were largely adult men.

The Oregon Unit often had to negotiate carefully between the preferences of the national administration and the desires of its local audience and performers. Whitcomb faced this very problem during Fleet Week in August of 1936, when U.S. Navy battleships and frigates sailed up the Willamette River to dock in Portland for the crews’ shore leave. The thousands of Navy officers and sailors that Fleet Week brought ashore needed to be entertained, and the Oregon Unit performed in “the smoker,” a stag party for

2500 sailors and 1000 American Legion Men put on by the American Legion at the

Armory in Portland. 10

Opportunities to break the rules of conduct allowed Oregon Unit vaudevillians latitude when performing for an adult audience that they had not enjoyed on the West

Coast vaudeville circuit. Heckling was a central component within the act of a lead clown

22

in the American circus, beginning as far back as 1840, when premiere clown Dan Rice

(1823-1900)† continually disrupted the pompous circus ringmaster with mocking

derision. Oregon Unit clown Al Adams brought this rule-breaking circus style to his

vaudeville performances. While performing his signature ball-balancing act, called the

“globe trotter,” for Fleet Week, Adams heckled the other vaudevillians, rolling through various acts and the audience in the Armory production.11 The Sentinel-Mist wrote,

“Adams appears in his own startling act on the rolling globe…and adds to the hilarity of

the performance by heckling the other members of the company during the show.”12 In

“The Circus” written in 1856 for Life Illustrated, Walt Whitman supports the purity of

the off-color antics in Dan Rice’s big tent. He wrote, “As a rule, the clown’s jokes and

the master’s grandiloquent speeches are extremely virtuous and intensely patriotic—

which makes it all the more desirable that the faintest appearance of indecency should be

absolutely forbidden.”13 Clowns like Rice and Adams crossed the line of decency, but because of their wild antics during the production, audience members like Whitman did not take offence. Adams had a pronounced history in the entertainment industry with his father the proprietor of the Great Southern Railroad circus. Adams grew up in greasepaint, packing and unpacking the circus across the South. Adams’ globetrotter act was a classic routine that pre-dated him; pictures of the act in artwork from early advertisements and illustrations of the P.T. Barnum circus of the late 19th century, give a

better idea of what it looked like. The illustration shows clowns all around a circus ring

balanced on enormous balls, avoiding elephants, lions and acrobats.14 As a function of

circus performance, a clown’s heckling offers a through-line to the disconnected variety

† Not to be confused with T.D. Rice, the originator of the “Jim Crow” character, though Dan Rice was also a popular blackface minstrel. 23

or circus acts, but with the added blue material in the vaudeville act, Adams was breaking

the rules for the all-male Navy audience. The vaudevillians had to negotiate the

vaudeville and FTP rules before each audience.

Oregon Unit vaudevillians had to worry about remaining employed and on relief,

as well as placing the best face on the WPA as the government’s representative in

Oregon, but the material they could present changed depending on their audience. With

many performances occurring in Portland parks, attended by children as well as adults,

the vaudevillians largely conformed to the values of the WPA. So, who was censoring the

Oregon Unit vaudevillians, outside of Whitcomb and their own self-censorship?

Censorship of the Oregon Unit by the FTP was not as much of an issue as it was in larger

cities like Seattle, Chicago or New York. State WPA Director Griffith did not meddle in

Whitcomb’s decisions as head of the Oregon Unit, and in fact supported her efforts. Due to the size and scale of the Oregon Unit, FTP administration in Washington, D.C. paid little attention to their actions. Whitcomb also did not seek controversy, and her

Midwestern morality and oversight may have caused her to choose shows – outside of the unit’s vaudeville productions – that would not enrage the public.‡ There was a balance between performances open to the public and those sponsored by fraternal organizations such as the Knights of Pythias that allowed blue material. The vaudevillians had worked for years with moral oversight by vaudeville managers, and thus the FTP’s standards

were nothing new.

Outside of the shared negotiation of moral values and censored blue material on

stage, the operation of the FTP and vaudeville had shared economic values. The goal of

‡ For example, when other FTP Units across the country were simultaneously opening It Can’t Happen Here, a play about fascism in the America, Whitcomb chose to open Night Beat, the Christmas story featuring Lee Grigsby. 24

the FTP was to engage a large working class audience by producing a wide variety of

plays and productions, from children’s theatre to legitimate drama. As an industry,

vaudeville wanted to attract working class audiences offering clean family entertainment

for children as well as adults. Vaudeville pioneer B.F. Keith, as early as 1898 was the

first to offer popular priced tickets for with a four-a-day or continuous structure, running the same performers on stage in rotation through the performance day.15 Keith’s strategy

was to draw a high volume of patrons through the performance day, continually rotating

acts through the day and changing acts weekly. Like vaudeville, the FTP goal was to

draw working class audiences with popular ticket prices.§ For example, the FTP offered a

“popular price” structure, with many performances having a vaudeville-like gate price of ten cents.

While the financial structure was the similar, the primary difference between the financial structure of vaudeville and the FTP was the profit motive, with Keith drawing a high volume of clientele to pay his performers and investors, whereas the FTP used gate receipts to pay for “other than labor costs” for productions. The FTP was about employment, not keeping the theatre in the black, and at the beginning of FTP operations, many performances were free to the public because the WPA could not figure out how to account for gate receipts. An accounting system was set up, and for over a year, the

money went back to the federal government and could not be used for local Unit

operations. The primary financial difference was how labor costs were paid, with

vaudeville pulling labor salaries from gate receipts and the FTP receiving labor salaries

§ The government used box office revenue to pay for all of the other expenses of theatrical production outside of labor costs, while vaudeville industry paid for labor and gave the profit to investors. 25

from the WPA.**

The Oregon Unit also shared aesthetic values with vaudeville, and followed a

similar “two-a-day” or “four-a-day” continuous structure. The Oregon Unit would often

perform multiple shows in a day, but rather than staying at a single venue, the troupe

would move between locations. The Unit also experimented with a continuous structure,

bringing back classic vaudeville performance. In 1937, the Oregon Unit resurrected a

pure continuous bill for one week at the Highway Theatre in South Portland. Ten acts of

vaudeville played continuously for twelve hours, with the Eddie Cantor film, Ali Baba

Goes to Town. In the film, Cantor portrays a hobo who falls asleep on the movie set of Ali

Baba and the Forty Thieves, and wakes in Baghdad to become a political advisor to the

Sultan, creating a employment relief program like the WPA. West Coast vaudeville grew

up with film, and at the Highway Theatre vaudeville acts were placed before and after the

film and “between reels” as they were changed. The Oregon Unit’s vaudeville and film

production featured legendary vaudevillians in a comedy about FDR’s New Deal along

with local vaudevillians, and ran continuously from 11 a.m. to midnight.

Aesthetically the vaudeville performances of the Oregon Unit have much in

common with standard vaudeville faire through history. The Oregon Daily Journal’s

descriptions of the acts presented by the Oregon Unit describe the kind of variety offered

during the golden age of vaudeville. “Included among the acts,” the Journal wrote, “were

Larson and Johnson, jugglers; Ernest Carrier, strong man; Lee Grigsby, Negro singer;

Louigi Ragan, accordionist; Al Adams’ Punch and Judy show. Mischa Pelz and his 12-

** While this distinction seems evident, it calls into question the financial structure of the FTP. If the FTP was able to slowly transfer the cost of labor from the WPA budget to gate receipts, creating theatre that were independent of the Federal budget, could the FTP have survived?

26

piece orchestra...”16 If the audience didn’t like one performer, all they had to do was wait

five minutes for the next act. As Keith had said of vaudeville, “There was something for

everyone,” and this was also true with the Oregon Unit. The skills and aesthetic qualities

of the performers, from the singers to the acrobats working in the Oregon Unit, connect

directly to a lineage of classic performance seen at the end of the 19th and beginning of

the 20th centuries in the U.S.

While the economic and aesthetic similarities are evident between the Oregon

Unit and vaudeville, the most endearing thematic similarity was the relationship the

performers had with their audience. Vaudevillians came from the people and were a part of a working-class tradition that embraced a rags to riches theme. Anybody in the vaudeville audience could practice a talent, and with hard work and persistence, become a star. Vaudeville was “the voice of the city” because anybody, no matter their economic or social background, could make it to “the big time” (a term referring to high paying

East Coast vaudeville circuits). Thematically, the vaudevillians in the Oregon Unit endured themselves to the people of Portland in much the same way. They came from a working-class tradition, and continually performed in benefits that helped the local community. The Oregon Unit’s first noted performance at the Shrine Hospital for

Crippled Children on July 21, 1936, started a long line of community benefits. The

Oregon Daily Journal noted, “Uncle Sam sent a new kind of tonic to crippled children…

when the vaudeville Unit of the Federal theatre of Portland, a WPA project, put on a real

old-fashioned vaudeville show for the little patients.”17 The location of the performance

and audience demographic was significant, because as a first performance, Whitcomb

was making a statement about the kind of work the Unit was going to do for Portland.

27

Playing for the benefit of the public, and in this case crippled children, endeared the

vaudevillians to the hearts and minds of the Portland populous. The Journal’s description

of the event gives a flavor of the fast-paced, lighthearted comedy of the vaudeville performance: “Bursts of laughter mixed with gasps of amazement as the professionals

went through their tricks at the hospital.”18 Obviously, the children enjoyed the

performance, but the description also suggests the vaudevillians’ professionalism. The

press, throughout the Oregon Unit’s existence, constantly emphasized the professional

nature of the company, either because the Oregon Unit was the only professional local

theatre in Portland, or the Oregon Unit press releases stressed their professional status.

Vaudevillians, whose shtick, songs, and antics were a mark of their long-honed professional careers, were a product of the people, connecting thematically to the working class and bringing their seasoned stage experience to the public as employees of

the WPA.

The forms and values of vaudeville and the Oregon Unit—thematic, economic

and aesthetic—aligned for different reasons. The primary difference was that vaudeville

was a business, and although there were business aspects to the FTP, the Units did not

operate with a clear profit motive. The goal of the FTP was employment, and it was

through the vaudevillian’s WPA relief status that the distinction from vaudeville becomes

clear. As relief workers, the Oregon Unit vaudevillians could relate with the ranks of the

unemployed and families on relief in Portland. At the same time, relief had a negative connotation, expressed by FTP director and former vaudevillian, Eddie Dowling, that the actors were not good enough to hold a job on the dwindling vaudeville circuits.19 A

tension existed in the vaudeville roots of the Oregon Unit between what was perceived by

28

FTP administration as useless talents in a dying art and the outpouring of support for

Oregon Unit vaudeville performances by a public needing to be entertained in a truly

depressed and depressing time. Highlighting the individual skills and talents of the

Oregon Unit vaudevillians demonstrates the tension between their dying art and their

popularity in Portland. The Oregon Unit vaudevillians also bear out similarities between

the values of the FTP and vaudeville through their service to working class audiences,

their aesthetic emphasis on labor and a Pacific Northwest regional aesthetic.

Ernest Carrier: Working Class Aesthetics

The West Coast vaudevillians had to transform their acts to accommodate their

audiences, giving their performances a regional aesthetic. In the book No Applause-Just

Throw Money, Trav S.D. describes the vaudevillian’s inseparable connection to the

audience: “Vaudeville was an industry in which success could be measured scientifically

and instantaneously using the world’s most ancient form of marketing survey: applause.”

The measure of an act’s worth was simple and immediate, and changed depending on

where you were in the country. S.D. continues, “Vaudevillians emerged from the people,

were a creation of the people, in a sense were elected by the people.”20 While Adams as

the clown upended the values (and at times the morals) of vaudeville with his circus- based performance, no performer in the Oregon Unit represented labor on stage more than the strongman, Ernest Carrier. Carrier’s acts of strength, like the performance of

Adams, were pulled directly from early popular entertainment while tapping into the labor of Portland’s working class.

Carrier is a great example of how vaudevillians negotiated their acts through the

29

Pacific Northwest region and the West Coast circuit. The iconic strongman type adapted

to the audiences needs in the Pacific Northwest, through his physical appearance and

stage equipment. As a vaudeville routine, the strongman was a specialty “dumbshow”

act, often placed as the opening act after intermission.21 The Oregon Unit featured Carrier

in every vaudeville performance, following the tradition of Eugene Sandow, one of the

first strongmen who had performed at end of the 19th century. In his book, On With the

Show, Robert C. Toll describes Sandow flexing through classic muscle-bound poses accompanied by a piano player: “Sandow lifted the pianist high in the air with one hand, put him down to applause, and then nonchalantly lifted the piano.”22 Carrier was not the

perfect specimen that Sandow had been advertised to be, but the former had an

“everyman” quality that connected to the audience. Carrier represented the labor of the

WPA, physically performing feats of strength and endurance that amazed his audience.

While Carrier follows Sandow’s type, his rugged lumberjack frame and West Coast style

broke with Sandow, emphasizing how the audience transformed the West Coast

vaudeville performer.

Carrier, a man who looked like he could have come from the Oregon woods, used

the familiar to create “gasps of amazement.”23 While his physical muscle-bound

attributes did not fit the Adonis qualities of Sandow, Carrier’s act highlighted his ability

to withstand pain and his unbelievable strength. The Portland News Telegram described

Carrier breaking and bending items commonly found in the Portland, such as “bursting an inner tube by lung power and breaking a bridge spike.”24 Portland was, and still is, a city

connected by bridges, and Portland audiences were familiar with the rigidity of the one-

inch thick, one-foot bridge spike that held many of the older bridges around the city

30

together. Carrier negotiated what a strongman might look like in Oregon, embracing the

image of a working class Oregonian incorporating common items found around the city

into his act. His skill delighted audiences while the tension of the FTP transition from

vaudeville to legitimate scripted work lies in his act. As Whitcomb began inserting

scripted plays into the repertoire Carrier had to adapt, changing from a “dumbshow”

strongman to a legitimate stage actor.

Values of the FTP Reinscribe Ethnicity in the City of Portland

Not every actor with the Oregon Unit looked like Carrier, a Caucasian muscle-

bound Oregonian. Between the turn of the century and the 1920s, Portland audiences had seen few minorities on the stages of the Portland Civic or in the stock theatre companies

like the Duffwin Players and the Baker Stock Company. Most of the African American

performers that came through Portland graced the vaudeville stages of the city, performed

for a few days and moved on. The entertainment onstage reflected the city itself, and the

accepted homogeneity separated the ethnically-diverse Oregon Unit from the other theatres in the city. While the Oregon Unit worked to help disrupt racial stereotypes in

Portland by presenting the talents of non-white performers, much of the content of the performances chosen by Whitcomb reinforced and reinscribed racial stereotypes. The

Oregon Unit did not separate out a “Negro Unit” like many Units in larger cities, nor did it exclude performers based on race, ethnically mixing the Unit. In the Oregon Unit, the tension between the opportunity to perform and portrayal of ethnicity, while at the same time including African Americans and Native Hawai’ian performers, suggests another negotiation Whitcomb undertook in the creation and presentation of vaudeville acts

31

before a working class Portland audience.

The performers of the Oregon Unit, because of their vaudeville background and path to the WPA relief rolls, were often more diverse than their Portland audiences.

Discrimination was an accepted condition in Oregon during the Great Depression, and

minorities faced little hope of improving their condition. According to 1940 U.S. Census

data, whites made up 98.7 percent of the population of Oregon, with African Americans

at 0.6 percent and “other races” (which the census defined as Indian, Japanese and

Chinese) at 1.0 percent.25 According to population maps from the mid-1930s in E.

Kimbark MacColl’s book Growth of a City, concentrations of African Americans lived

on Portland’s East Side near the Burnside Bridge, and Japanese and Chinese populations

concentrated on the Willamette River on Portland’s Westside. Portland’s Reality Board

actively campaigned for racial exclusion in white Portland neighborhoods, evidenced by

a statement made in a 1939 Portland realtor training manual by Vice President of

Commonwealth, Inc., Chester Moores:

We were discussing at the Realty Board recently the advisability of setting up certain districts for Negroes and orientals [sic]. We talked about the possibility of creating desirable districts which would actually cater to those groups and make life more pleasant for them. After all, they have to live too, the same as youngsters.26

The racist stereotype of non-whites as “youngsters” was seen in literature throughout the

1930s, with minorities often described as children unable to take care of themselves and

the white race seen as a parent or guardian. By presenting non-whites on stage in

Portland, Whitcomb was leveraging a mandate by Flanagan to include all races, working

to undo racial stereotypes. Within Portland real estate, such acceptance of non-whites in a

white community was severe. Realty Board members in Portland were expelled if they

32

sold a home to non-whites in a white neighborhood and did not stick to the unwritten

racist rule.27 Property ownership in the wealthy neighborhoods on Portland’s West side

was controlled exclusively by whites, with the first Japanese-American property owner purchasing a large home in the King’s Hill district as late as 1951, though this was “much to the horror of many nearby residents.”28 With minorities concentrated in areas of the

city, and taking into account their low census numbers, white Portlanders could go about

their day never experiencing another race or ethnicity. For this reason, the Oregon Unit

was an anomaly, featuring a Native Hawai’ian quartette and a “negro baritone,” the Unit

was more ethnically diverse than other Portland theatres. Whitcomb never shied away

from the Oregon Unit’s difference, however, and she prominently placed the Hawai’ian performers as an opening act and featured the Unit’s diversity by highlighting the talents of Lee Grigsby, the negro baritone.

African American performer “Lullaby” Lee Grigsby would play a vital role in the

Oregon Unit until 1938, when the company shifted to legitimate performance and he moved back to Los Angeles.†† Grigsby was a featured artist with the Oregon Unit and the inclusion of Grigsby in the cast pushed against the practices of segregation found in many branches of the New Deal bureaucracy, including the Negro Units of the FTP and the

Civilian Conservation Corps. As the only African American hired by the Oregon Unit, and the only African American regularly on stage in Portland, he was a pioneer.

Grigsby’s inclusion in the Oregon Unit demonstrates Whitcomb’s negotiation around race, which other New Deal programs such as the CCC and the WPA, “solved” by segregating the work force. By not only including Grigsby, but featuring him

†† Lee Grigsby and Theresa Grigsby are mentioned in the May1939 California Eagle article, where he was performing in Hamilton Methodist Church for the 12th Street YWCA branch Business and Professional Women’s Club. 33

prominently in starring roles, Whitcomb was disrupting the expectation of FTP

administration, who had segregated within the FTP by creating the Negro Units. The

Negro Theatre Project was located in 23 cities across the nation, and although the plays

were often made up of an entirely African American cast, whites, such as Orson Welles

who famously created his Voodoo Macbeth with the New York Negro Unit, were often

charged with directing. Cities such as Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York had a

large enough African American population to support a Negro Unit, but smaller southern

Negro Units such as Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, as well as Birmingham,

Alabama, were mandated by WPA administration in Washington, D.C. to keep FTP units

segregated. The Oregon Unit was able to work outside the rules of segregation imposed on the New Deal programs because of its small size and inability to form a Negro Unit,

the support offered to Whitcomb by WPA State Director Griffith, and, most importantly,

Grigsby’s singing and performing abilities, which were applauded by Portland audiences.

Grigsby’s employment at a resort outside of Portland prior to joining the WPA relief rolls helps open our understanding to the type of work vaudeville performers had to do in the years following the collapse of the vaudeville industry. Vaudevillians like

Grigsby moved to smaller venues, performing at nightclubs or vacation resorts across the country. Portland clubs, resorts and summer recreation facilities, such as the Oaks and

Janzen Beech, employed many Portland entertainers.‡‡ Grigsby had been a Portland

resident for five years by the time he was hired by the Oregon Unit. Evidence in a 1931

report from the Los Angeles California Eagle notes Grigsby on vacation from the “Buros

‡‡ The move of vaudevillians to alternative forms of entertainment and smaller venues is an area of popular performance history that deserves further study. Ultimately, this move is one that allowed vaudevillians to continue performing through the Great Depression, bridging the move to television and film for many entertainers into the 1940s and 1950s.

34

Challet” country club outside of Portland, Oregon.

Lee, one of the best singers in the business left [Los Angeles] a year ago taking a small band that he organized on short notice and booked them as ‘Lullaby’ Lee and his Happiness Boys. Since then they have been working steadily at the high- class pleasure resort, where they have gained great popularity and are highly lauded by patrons and owners both for their work and excellent deportment… Lee was one of the singers under contract at R.K.O. studio for several months during the filming of Dr. Arrowsmith and several Movietone features. §§

Two brief scenes in the film Dr. Arrowsmith feature Grigsby’s baritone voice, where he plays an “island native” singing in a funeral march. His connection with R.K.O. suggests his vaudeville past with the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit, where he may have crooned across the country. Grigsby was able to stave off the Great Depression by working at the high-class Buros Challet country club. The fact that he was able to work for a country club for several years into the economic downturn demonstrates his presence and talent as a performer.

Whitcomb’s adaptation of the plays to the talents of the performers became a trademark of success that carried through all of the productions by the Oregon Unit.

While the descriptions of the productions in local papers tell of a distinctly vaudevillian flavor, the move towards text-based performance inched the company closer to

Whitcomb’s hope and vision for the troupe. After initially touring the zany and startling group of performers standard vaudeville faire around Portland, the challenge for

Whitcomb was weaving their talents into a coherent production around a central theme.

§§ The film Arrowsmith, directed by John Ford and starring Ronald Colman and Helen Hayes, was released just after Christmas in 1931. The connection of Lee Grigsby to RKO studios may indicate his vaudeville connection to the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit, which in 1930 was sold to the Radio Corporation by Joe Kennedy to become Radio Keith Orpheum (RKO) Studios (Stein, American Vaudeville, 335-6 and 371). The vaudeville stars on contract with the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit transferred to RKO, and many vaudevillians moved to Los Angeles in order to continue working. This corporate transfer away from live performance and towards motion pictures and radio broadcasts along with the transfer of vaudeville to film houses, created massive unemployment in the vaudeville industry and a great migration of entertainers to Southern California (California Eagle, 10/2/1931, 10). 35

She (and the FTP administrators above her) wanted the FTP to produce legitimate scripted material, but her performers had talents in very specific areas that did not include acting. Training a crooner, a clown and a strongman in the art of acting would come only

by small advances, allowing the Unit to add to their scripted repertoire one play at a time.

Two productions, Night Beat and Sloping West, used the talents and skits of

vaudeville performers in the Oregon Unit to generate content for the productions, while

moving the troupe closer to text-based performance. Night Beat was a one-act Christmas

play that told a distinctly African American tale, while Sloping West, set in rural Southern

Oregon, suggests a focus on regionalism embraced by the New Deal, featuring a one-act

play by Arthur Hopkins as the centerpiece of the performance. Both productions

endeared themselves to the struggling working class of Portland, focusing on survival of

the lower class during the Great Depression.

Night Beat: An Unemployed Working Class Story

In December of 1936, the Oregon Unit featured Grigsby in Night Beat, based on a

monologue written by short story author and novelist Roark Bradford. The production,

the first adaptation by the Unit, was significant because it has distinctly African

American themes, centered on “negro spirituals,” performed for a largely white audience.

The play resonated with the extreme poverty seen across Portland, such as the shantytowns constructed under the N.E. Grand Avenue Bridge in Sullivan’s Gulch.29 The

power of the play was its hopeful Christmas message, a message that allowed Whitcomb

to pull several of the Oregon Federal One projects together in a single “community sing”

for the City of Portland. Despite the positive message and the presentation of minorities

36

on stage, the racist overtones presented in Bradford’s poem reinscribed the position of

African Americans as uneducated children.

Roark Bradford in the late 1920s and ‘30s found acclaim writing African

American stories and characters, and Night Beat was part of a long line of Bradford’s

work adapted for the stage. Bradford’s 1931 novel John Henry was adapted from the

popular African American folk tale, and Marc Connelly adapted Ol' Man Adam an' His

Chillun, into the play The Green Pastures with an extended run on Broadway in 1928.

Night Beat was adapted from Bradford’s “The Christmas Sermon” published for the

Christmas edition Esquire Magazine in 1936.30 In many of his writings African American characters are stereotypical, what literary critic Sterling A. Brown called, “burlesques” of

African American life.31 Bradford used the cadence and slang of the minstrel show in his

portrayals, and, indeed, Bradford’s work was part of a long line of minstrel portrayals of

African Americans, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Huckleberry Finn. In the case of Night

Beat, whites were not smudging burnt cork on their face to become the minstrel

performers. Eric Lott, in his investigation of minstrel performance, called Connelly’s

highly successful The Green Pastures, a “near minstrel show,” and Bradford’s pattern of

speech in “The Christmas Sermon” is identical to that in Ol' Man Adam an' His Chillun.32

Brown has criticized Bradford’s short stories for “dividing Negroes into three types, ‘the nigger, the colored person, and the Negro—upper case N,” and “The

Christmas Sermon” continues in this vein. “Bradford takes his stand by the first type, and though delighted to be in his company, sees [the black man] solely as primitive and

uproariously funny,” Brown wrote.33 This can be seen in “The Christmas Sermon” with

the types not only written into the text, but also personified by Esquire Magazine artist

37

Eric Lundgren as the minstrel characters Zip Coon and Jim Crow. Bradford, like other

writers in the 1930s, such as Constance Rourke, celebrated the American folk tradition of

the minstrel show. In Rourke’s chapter on minstrelsy, defined by Lott as “the people’s cultural position,”34 Rourke identifies the comic nature of the minstrel, lacking what she

perceives as any negative emotions, portraying only a comic spirit:

Minstrelsy was of course white masquerade; and the double use of the mask seemed to create a profound satisfaction for American audiences, as if the sheer accomplished artifice aroused an instinctive response among them. The mask might be worn as […] a front against the world in any of these impersonations, concealing a childish and unformed countenance: but it was part of a highly conscious self-projection.35

Rourke sees the minstrel as a deliberate African American countenance; a deliberate

mask but fails to see anything wrong in the way a white man was portraying African

Americans. Similarly, Bradford’s characters in “The Christmas Story” both conceal what

Rourke describes as “a childish unformed countenance.”36 While the characters speak in

Bradford’s childish uneducated manner, the content of Night Beat was serious, reverend

and humorous. In the stage adaptation of the poem, Grigsby’s “down and out” character

was not only looking for spiritual guidance, but asking for a reason to live. The nativity

scene gave Grigsby guidance through the Christmas sermon and hymns. Bradford wrote:

And I can see Poor Mary A-layin’ back on de hay A-groanin’ and travailin’. Joseph had done what he could do But dat wan’t dardly nothin’. De hotel man wouldn’t take ‘em in, But said, ‘Go to Charity Hospital.’ Now, Joseph was a Jew and a Jew couldn’t vote, So hit wan’t not room at Charity. De Community Chist had done closed for de day, And de Welfare was too busy.37

Bradford’s sermon on the Nativity begins with a bar of music from the hymn “Wasn’t It a

38

Grand Day—When Jesus Christ was Born,” with language taking on the African

American types outlined by Brown, thrown into a modern context.

Night Beat, told through dialogue and song, “places the story of the nativity

through ordinary common people in New York’s Central Park.” Grigsby plays “a down

and outer who tells the story of Christmas in the form of a monologue; a group of Central

Park idlers furnish a background of carols and Negro spirituals.”38 Descriptions and

criticism of the production of Night Beat highlight the qualities of the poem, with Lee

Grigsby given backhanded praise by The News Telegram:

Though Grigsby is a student of operatic music and has played in motion pictures, his portrayal of the part is simple and unaffected—he knows and feels the negro’s child-like conception of the Christmas story.39

The tension in the description of Grigsby’s skilled performance (and the author’s racism)

demonstrates the way in which the Oregon Unit was disrupting audience expectations.

The “child-like” racist reference by the Telegram reporter was typical of many articles

found in Portland newspapers in the 1930s and echoes the writing of Rourke, Moore and

many authors of the time. At the same time the Oregon Unit was disrupting audience

racial expectations, Bradford’s poem was reinscribing racial stereotypes. The News

Telegram critic was responding to the simple character presented in Bradford’s poem, spoken in a minstrel dialect, which did not disrupt the audience racial stereotype. Despite

Grigsby’s training, which for the reporter should be a detriment to his performance, he is

“simple and unaffected,” while his race places him in touch with a “child-like” understanding of the nativity. Bradford’s poem shines through Night Beat’s adaptation, with Grigsby taking on Sterling’s “Negro—capital N” type. The play was seen by a

Portland’s white population, and although it features an African American in the lead, a

39

stereotypical type was reinforced even as the virtuosity of Grigsby argued against it.

Night Beat, like Connelly’s adaptation of The Green Pastures, was a hit and the

Oregon Unit had an entire month of bookings through the month of December. The play was presented in a wide range of venues across economic and social classes, traveling to

Camp Chapman in the town of Scappoose run by the WPA; to Portland area schools; to

the Studio Theatre on the top floor of the Studio Building, St. Helens Hall in downtown

Portland; and to high-class private clubs such as the Women Club and the Men’s

Resort.*** The troupe would add their vaudeville bill to the beginning or end of many of

their private evening performances of the play to create a full-length production. The

response to the performance was overwhelming. In a single weekend, Night Beat was

seen by 6,000 patrons, and added to its numbers by performing for the Elks Club in

Oregon City, the Order of the Eastern Star in Forest Grove and in the Pythian Building in

Portland.40 The Oregon Unit performed Night Beat over 33 times in 23 days, and was seen by over 10,000 people, an impressive figure in a city with a population of

300,000.††† Night Beat was scripted text-based performance based on “The Christmas

Sermon” and moved away from the vaudeville acts the Unit performed for over a year.

Although the play reinscribed rather than disrupted racial stereotypes, the overwhelming popularity of the play across the classes, and the incorporation of the work into several Federal One programs around the holiday season, provided an ethnically-

*** The Studio theatre was located on the 9th floor of the Studio Building on Taylor Street and 6th in Downtown Portland. The Studio Building was constructed to support the arts, with many dance and art instructors operating out of the offices. In the office on the 9th floor the iron doors to the original theatre are extant, complete with comedy and tragedy masks. The Guild theatre is attached to the building on the first floor, with an entrance on through the Studio Building on Taylor Street.

††† I have come to the number 10,000, by taking the 6,000 patrons documented by the ODJ who attended the four Auditorium performances, and added at least 100 students, club members and patrons attending each of the additional 29 performances. 40

diverse program that told a story of hope and promise for an unemployed working-class

audience in Portland. In Night Beat Whitcomb pulled together several divisions of

Federal One in Portland in 1936, including the Federal Orchestra and Federal Band for

the only “Community Sing” in the Oregon Unit’s three year run. This is significant

because while all three divisions—the band, orchestra and theatre—were prolific in

Portland, they rarely played together in a single public performance. The Community

Sing occurred free of charge just before Christmas at the Auditorium, an enormous public theatre operated by the city of Portland. Included in the performance were a 150-piece

WPA harmonica band, made up of WPA professionals and anyone in Portland that could play harmonica, and the 30 voices of the WPA Negro chorus, which may have helped in the spirituals within the Night Beat production. The diversity seen on the Portland stage was significant in a majority white community, separated the work of the Oregon Unit from other theatres in town, and moved Grigsby into a featured position among the vaudevillians. The Oregon Unit was supported by the large pool of sponsors underwriting the production, but the most promising outcome of the successful Christmas show was the support of the Oregon Daily Journal, which would offer Whitcomb a temporary home for the Oregon Unit.

Sloping West: A Play with Regional Values

The Oregon Unit’s production of Sloping West in February 1937 represented regional values found in the New Deal, with Whitcomb presenting characters from

Oregon. Whitcomb was responding to a call by Flanagan to utilize vaudeville talent in new and dramatic ways,

41

If the plays do not exist we shall have to write them. We shall have to work more closely with our dramatists. We cannot be too proud to study our medium. By this I do not mean only the technique of dramatic writing […] I mean specifically, our own FEDERAL THEATRE companies and our own FEDERAL THEATRE audiences. I mean, specifically, the problem of vaudeville and how the valuable techniques of the vaudeville can be reused.41

Flanagan was speaking to New York producers working with the Federal Theatre who saw the stagnation of vaudeville, both economically and socially. Flanagan was a strong proponent of regional identity within the FTP, and to that end wanted the Units at the state level to respond to the needs of the people at the local level, in much the same way

FDR saw the formation of the national government to be a product of the grassroots, from the bottom up.

FDR outlined his thoughts on a regionally-based system of governance in a speech given in September 1937 at the inauguration of the Bonneville Dam. The bill creating such a system was working its way through Congress, seeking to create

“regional planning boards to be set up for the purpose of coordinating the planning for the future in seven or eight natural geographic regions.” FDR wanted to apply the same regional thinking to the entire nation that went into the CCC and the WPA, and with it the

FTP. He sought a decentralized form of governance where “the responsibility of the

Federal Government for the welfare of its citizens will […] progress to the National

Capital from the ground up – from the communities and counties and states which lie within each of the logical geographical areas.”42 Regional thinking permeated the FDR administration, with the hope that the same regional framework that gave strength to the

FTP could be applied nationally.

With the production of Sloping West, Whitcomb heeded a mandate laid down by

Flanagan to incorporate new regionally-inspired theatre into the framework of the Oregon

42

Unit. The FTP itself was set up with a regional structure with the Western Region based in Los Angeles. Cooperation between state agencies was encouraged at the national level because of this regional identity. The sharing of personnel between FTP Units across state lines, as I will describe below and in the next chapter, came about because of the support of regionalism within the administration.

The Oregon Unit’s move away from touring vaudeville performance and towards the structured performance of Sloping West came in the middle of winter, after the Unit had toured their vaudeville act extensively around Portland at clubs, societies and fraternal organizations. The Oregon Unit had reached a saturation point, where every willing organization needing entertainment that supported the Federal Theatre cause saw the performance. Vaudeville’s popularity had hinged on “the circuit,” a string of theatres linked together by an individual owner, like the Pantages or the Sullivan-Considine chain in the West, or by a contractual alliance, like the Western Vaudeville Managers

Association, which was an early conglomeration of circuits and talent nationally led by the Orpheum circuit at the turn of the 20th century.43 Circuits hired vaudevillians to travel from theatre to theatre, city to town, often staying in a single location for three days to a week. The constant variety of entertainment, filling 10-14 acts on a vaudeville bill, meant that the performer would be employed for the same act for 20-30 weeks at a stretch. If the act was popular, little would have to change before the audiences on the circuit saw the performer again. While the rotation of performers worked for the circuit because of its comparatively vast geographic area, the movement of performers around Portland by the

Oregon Unit meant that audiences often became bored seeing the same bill in the same rotation, no matter how mesmerizing. With a fixed group of performers on relief,

43

Whitcomb decided to adapt the vaudeville routine by using her varied performers and a

central theme to create a single production.

Moving the performers in such a direction required rehearsal and training.

Constantly transferring the Unit from venue to venue, making arrangements, finding

space and booking performances took time and energy away from rehearsals. The

opportunity to gather the company together and rehearse, while slowing down the touring

schedule and performing in a fixed location, came in 1937, when the WPA was offered a

“demonstration space” on the second floor of the Portland Public Market. The Unit was

able to use a space converted into a small theatre at the Market that placed them in a fixed

location for an extended period, prompting WPA State Director Griffith to come up with the idea of a permanent theatre for the Oregon Unit, which is a focus of the next chapter.

The Portland Public Market was enormous, filling two long blocks on the downtown waterfront with parking for over 650 automobiles. While the construction of the Market was supported by the downtown business community and had political backing, the merchants from the open-air makeshift Yamhill Market, which the Public

Market was supposed to replace, were never given a voice in the process and did not care to be removed from the Yamhill Market. Yamhill Public Market stalls, closed after the

Portland Public Market opened, prompted Yamhill merchants to open a cooperative in another building on Yamhill Street. At the opening of the Portland Public Market, ten days before Christmas in 1933, the tenant quota was never full. The City of Portland lost the waterfront building due to lack of planning and public support in 1936, and the

Oregon Daily Journal, a company sympathetic to FDR’s New Deal, eventually purchased the property in 1948 for $750,000.44

44

In February 1937, a newly constructed stage in the Portland Public Market, on the western shores of the Willamette River, allowed all Federal One organizations in

Portland to display their work to the public. The Oregon Daily Journal leased the building from the city and in an effort to increase customer activity, the WPA was offered a performance space for the Oregon Unit, the WPA Band and Orchestra on the nearly vacant second floor. Through a “progress and planning exhibition,” the WPA sought to increase their public support by emphasizing employment statistics, costs and beneficial

WPA projects; the Timberline Lodge, the Wolf Creek highway and coast highway projects, as well as plans for the Portland-Columbia Airport and Bonneville Dam.45 The

WPA programs benefited the entire Northwest region of the country, and the Oregon

Unit’s production of Sloping West, on the Portland Public Market stage every day at 1:30 p.m., highlighted the Oregon Unit’s participation in this regionally-based idea. Sloping

West was another wildly popular production with the Oregon Daily Journal reporting the

“five-act variety show on the third week was seen more than 80 times.”46

Sloping West was the first play by the Oregon Unit that responded to a regional

New Deal value, pulling from the talents of vaudevillians while focusing on people in

Southern Oregon. Sloping West was organized around a one-act play by Arthur Hopkins and once again pulled the company closer to text-based performance. Sloping West was

“a Hillbilly musical set in Southern Oregon,” offering “a curtain raiser of Mexican music, a one-act play by Arthur Hopkins, a skit satirizing old-fashioned melodrama and many dances and hillbilly songs.”47 Every vaudeville act transformed their work for the production to fit in a rural setting, “laid in the Oregon backwoods.” 48 Featured were comic rope tricks and “unusual cowboy dances by Dan Feely, a bullfight with Lee

45

Grigsby as a toreador who tames ‘Ol’ Snorty,’ the bull, with a pitchfork and a razor.”49

The play placed the people of Southern Oregon in a comedic light for Portland audiences.

At the center of the Southern Oregon skits was Arthur Hopkins’ play Moonshine, set in the backwoods in a moonshiner’s shack.‡‡‡ The text is an example of how

Whitcomb negotiated the vaudevillians in the Unit towards legitimate text-based

performance while appealing to the regional New Deal philosophy embraced by

Flanagan. The play is about Luke Hazy, a backwoods moonshiner, who has captured and

plans on killing a man he believes is a revenuer, a government agent charged with tracking down and destroying moonshine stills. Luke’s nemesis is Jim Dunn, a legendary revenuer who Luke fixates on hanging, and he has pinned a stick figure drawing of the hanging on the upstage wall of the shack. Luke offers the tied up revenuer a last drink and cigar, which the man refuses, stating he wants nothing more than to end his life. The revenuer tells Luke that he has tried to commit suicide without success and has attempted to put his life in danger by walking across a busy street and getting in fights with thugs in

the city without success. Convinced that the man was just trying to commit suicide, Luke

lets him go, giving him his only horse. As a parting gesture, the man leaves his address

for Luke to look up when he visits the city, having to write his name on the picture of Jim

Dunn hanging on the wall. After the man leaves, Luke slowly reads the man’s

signature—“Jim Dunn”—grabs his shotgun, and runs out the door too late: the hillbilly

was duped.

‡‡‡ The Journal report cited a “one-act by Arthur Hopkins” within the performance, but the national archive index does not give credit to Hopkins for the play. What is available within the National Archives is a folder with photos of an Oregon Unit production of Hopkins’ one-act Moonshine, written in 1924. Moonshine is a play that was never credited to the Oregon Unit by the Telegram, Journal or the Oregonian. Judging from production photos and the Hillbilly content of the one-act, it is my supposition that the play Moonshine was used in the production of Sloping West. 46

The Twenty-First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ending prohibition in the

United States, was signed into law by FDR in 1933, four years before the production of

Moonshine by the Oregon Unit. With the decline of the Oregon timber industry in the mid-1920s, the residents of Southern Oregon had few job prospects, and distilling illegal

moonshine in the backwoods was a product of survival. While the play is a comedy and

mocks the character of Luke, the connection and understanding Whitcomb had to the

residents of Portland and their feelings about the people of Southern Oregon, was

demonstrated in the selection of the play.

Whitcomb’s move to the Public Market gave rise to the first regionally-based

production in a line of such productions by the Oregon Unit. Her negotiations to get the

Unit into the Public Market were also the beginning of a relationship with the owners and

editors of the Oregon Daily Journal that would lead to great publicity for the Oregon

Unit. Performances in the Public Market gave the performers a regular, warm space to

perform in the winter months, tied the vaudeville troupe to the WPA in the public eye,

and most importantly began moving the players away from vaudeville and towards

legitimate text-based performance. While the attendance numbers in the Public Market were impressive (10,000+ patrons over four weeks), they would pale in comparison to a production that would place the Oregon Unit firmly in legitimate Shakespearean drama—

Taming of the Shrew.

Into the Parks: Shrew Serves the East Side

The Oregon Unit production of Taming of the Shrew in August 1937 represented the values of FTP, serving working class audiences in Portland’s East Side

47

neighborhoods by moving the production to community parks and offering free

entertainment for all. Whitcomb negotiated with the Portland Parks Department to not

only provide performance spaces in city parks, but for the city to supply a portable stage

with settings on a flatbed trailer that were moved easily to area parks. The communities

served were the hardest hit by the Great Depression, with an audience who demonstrated

their approval by attending the Shrew performances en mass. The Oregon Unit’s commitment to the working class was a part of its vaudeville roots, while Whitcomb’s ability to move the vaudevillians to a Shakespeare text placed the vaudevillians firmly in legitimate text-based performance.

The Oregon Unit vaudevillians had a relationship with the audiences that went beyond the stage, with many of the actors and administrators also living in Portland’s

East Side neighborhoods. The East Side was primarily made up of working-class neighborhoods, and the Oregon Unit’s performances reflect a connection to the worker, performing where the audiences lived. §§§ These audiences had been middle class before

the Great Depression, but with the collapse of the economy fell into desperate times.

Trying to uncover the middle-class dynamics just prior to the Great Depression,

University of Illinois History professor, Robert D. Johnson in The Radical Middle Class explores the contours of class in Portland. According to Johnson,

When historians have looked for a middle class, they have far too often tended to allow a professional elite to serve as a proxy for the entire middle class. In Portland, however, the more numerous, and ultimately the more politically significant, part of the middling population was its lower segment. This “lower middle class” of small-scale merchants and manufacturers, clerical workers, and lower-level professionals had a solid material base in the city’s economic structure.50

§§§ The Oregon Unit performed in Mount Tabor, Powell, Columbia, Mount Scott, Duniway, Belmont and Grant parks on Portland’s East Side from 1936-1938.

48

In the years before the Great Depression, in the Progressive Era Portland of the 1920s,

the “lower-level professionals” made up a majority of Portland’s population, and as the

Great Depression worsened joined many failing small businessmen who made up the

bulk of the unemployed. This East Side neighborhood population made up the Oregon

Unit audiences for Taming of the Shrew. Whitcomb and other performers in the Unit who called the East Side home chose to serve the unemployed where they lived, connecting the labor of the WPA theatre to the throngs needing free entertainment. **** Whitcomb’s

work, directing performances to the needs of the people, was exactly what Flanagan and

the administration in Washington, D.C. hoped for when the FTP was organized. Flanagan

wrote:

…we must develop in ourselves and our projects powers equal to the gigantic task of bringing to people across America, hitherto unable to afford dramatic entertainment, a theatre which should reflect our country, its history, its present problems, its diverse regions and populations.51

While the stated goal of the FTP was employment for theatre professionals, when it came

down to performing for destitute Americans, the reward for members of the Oregon Unit

was measured in more than dollars and sense. The players were performing for an

audience that they were a part of economically, morally and socially. It was the

connection of the troupe to the audience that accounted for the retention of performers in

the Oregon Unit, whose acts provided a civic duty entertaining the Portland masses.

The performers were ready and eager to perform in the outdoors, judging by the

retention of the cast over several years, and perhaps the answer lies in the resilience and

adaptive ability of the West Coast vaudevillian. While many Orpheum and Pantages

**** Bess Whitcomb and Oregon Unit dance choreographer, Jack Biles lived in Northeast Portland Neighborhoods according to 1936-38 Portland telephone directories. 49

theatres touted their marble splendor and beautiful décor in the lobby, backstage was

often a different story. The West Coast circuit, like the string of Orpheum Theatres

connected to Portland, took vaudevillians into frigid and unclean backstage areas. Poor

conditions led to so many outbreaks of tuberculosis among vaudevillians that the

National Vaudeville Artists founded a lodge for vaudevillians to convalesce.†††† J. C.

Nugent, in his autobiography It’s a Great Life, recalled the Orpheum Theatre in

Edmonton, Canada:

This was one of our ungodly icy stands on the way to Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Portland and ‘Frisco. The Edmonton audience sat in overcoats and furs. The temperature outside was thirty below. While the theater was supposed to be warmly heated I could feel the cold penetrating the floor of the stage as I stood there driving my monologue out at them despite a bad cold and chilling feet.52

While many featured at the top of vaudeville’s bill made a small fortune performing across the country, the conditions for most performers, from travel to lodging to performance, were deplorable. The vaudevillians in the Oregon Unit stayed with the troupe working in inclement conditions because they had experienced far worse on the vaudeville circuit and were happy to be employed.

Whitcomb faced what she perceived as an inability on the part of vaudevillians to perform in a full-length scripted performance, let alone a Shakespearian production, and she actively campaigned to acquire seasoned actors. Her frustration and perception of the vaudevillians’ performances will be covered in more detail in chapter two, but her negotiation as the head of the Oregon Unit with FTP administration to get Shrew into performance changed the course of the Unit for the rest of its existence. Two events

occurred in 1937 that allowed skilled legitimate theatre actors to join the ranks of the

†††† The lodge at Saranac Lake is now the Will Rogers Hospital, founded in 1927 by the NVA and transferred to the Will Rogers Memorial Commission in 1936. 50

Oregon Unit. Her negotiation to increase non-relief personnel in the Oregon Unit, while simultaneously borrowing talent from larger FTP Units in the Western Region, such as

Los Angeles and San Francisco, quickly transformed the Oregon Unit from vaudeville format into legitimate scripted performance.53 Whitcomb’s idea of acquiring actors from other Western Units took time to work through administration, but by the end of May

1937, Regional Director J. Howard Miller agreed to allow actors from other Western

Region Units to temporarily transfer to the Oregon Unit. In order to take advantage of the short Oregon summer, however, Whitcomb also had to obtain skilled talent through different means.

The total number of relief workers in the Oregon Unit was determined by a percentage of total WPA workers in Oregon. The increase in WPA relief workers on large works projects such as the Timberline Lodge and Bonneville Dam in 1937, increased the allotment of relief workers in the Oregon Unit by ten. The extra relief workers filled carpenter and scenic artist positions, but, more importantly for Whitcomb, the allotted increase allowed the number of non-relief professionals to increase as well.

The Instructions for the Federal Theatre stated:

… when it is necessary to complete the personnel of the project unit, or to insure the professional excellence of a project unit, and when the necessary talent is not available on relief lists in nearby districts, non-relief workers may be employed. The total number of workers employed from non-relief sources […] may not exceed ten percent of the total number of workers employed by Federal funds.54

With the new hires the number in the Unit swelled to 50, and Whitcomb could hire two extra non-relief positions. She hired Portland actors Don Porter and Madge Wynne, who she had trained at the Portland Civic Theatre School, to play Petruchio and Kate in

51

Taming of the Shrew.‡‡‡‡ The popularity of the two actors, who had graced the PCT stage in several successful productions, combined with the limitless seating available in the scheduled outdoor park venues, shattered the previous Oregon Unit attendance records set by Night Beat and Sloping West. Unfortunately, the shift to non-relief and borrowed actors was not a positive move for everyone in the Unit. The change moved many of the

Oregon Unit vaudevillians to supporting roles that had previously performed prominent roles before Taming of the Shrew, such as Grigsby in Night Beat. It also moved the FTP away from its “primary aim,” which was “the reemployment of theatre workers […] on public relief,” a fact that Whitcomb herself acknowledged, and to which I will return in the next chapter.55

While Taming of the Shrew was not positive for all the vaudevillians in hindsight, what was successful and enjoyed by all of the Oregon Unit actors was the popular response from the Portland audience. The descriptions of the Taming of the Shrew, opening at Laurelhurst Park on July 6,, 1937, highlight the crazy antics found in previous vaudeville performances, condensing Shakespeare’s script into a form that was similar to a vaudeville production of Taming of the Shrew produced by the Theatre Guild in New

York in 1935 staring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.56 The Theatre Guild production of

Shrew barnstormed across the country, leading up to and following a long run on

Broadway. The production was described as Shakespeare in “circus trappings,” and prominently featured acrobats and dwarfs with actors in the cast interacting with the audience throughout.57 Whitcomb applied and expanded the Theatre Guild production

‡‡‡‡ The Internet Movie Database highlights Don Porter’s acting career from 1939-1988, where he acted in several World War II combat and spy films (staring in Madame Spy in 1942), and Westerns, before a long career in television working on successful shows such as The Love Boat, The Bionic Woman, and Hawaii Five-O.) [www.imdb.com/name/nm0692093] 52

concept to the talents of the Oregon Unit vaudevillians, pulling from the structure and

antics devised by Alfred Lunt, while including “such things as strongman acts between-

the-acts.”58

Whitcomb recruited people she had worked with at the Portland Civic to help

with the production, including James Beard, the popular chef, who designed “skillfully executed” costumes constructed by the Grout School WPA sewing division.59

Whitcomb’s negotiations with city government played a vital role, with the Portland

Parks bureau allowing different park locations to perform as well as a portable stage.60

The settings on the portable stage, designed by Peter Marroney and constructed by the

Oregon Federal Theatre stage crew, were “something to rave about.”61 With 800 seats

supplied by the Park Bureau, “the theatre capacity [was] as limitless as space—admission

… as free as the air” and attendance figures topped an estimated 15,000. 62 Amplification by “a public address system” which made it possible to “hear the dialogue plainly within a hundred yards of the stage” allowed the large capacity crowds to hear the show over a vast area. Newspaper accounts of the Oregon Unit production focus on Don Porter’s

Petruchio and the antics of the vaudeville actors. The Journal reported,

Juggling, an aerial act, music and dancing will be special intermission numbers during the production… the ‘Shrew’ will be the first full length legitimate play to be given by the Oregon Federal Theatre, which has hitherto offered only one-act plays and variety shows.63

Like Lunt’s Broadway production, the intermission was filled with acrobatics and

performance. For the reporter at the Journal, who may have seen many productions of

Sloping West in the Journal’s Public Market a few months earlier, the move towards legitimate full-length drama is a mark of progress for the Oregon Unit.

The Oregon Unit’s production of Taming of the Shrew was a product of many

53

victories and milestones for Whitcomb, and the beginning of the end for straight

vaudeville performance by the Oregon Unit. The production incorporated experienced

vaudeville talent with the classically trained professional actors and produced a legitimate

Shakespearean comedy inspired by a New York Broadway production rather than

vaudeville schtick. Whitcomb was able to negotiate with the regional office on the matter

of employment in the Unit’s favor, and able to book parks in and around Portland, while getting the Parks Department to sponsor and supply a mobile stage, allowing the booking of multiple shows on a single day. With support from the government, from sponsors like

the Portland Parks, and from her Portland Civic friends, Whitcomb raised the bar on the

quality of performance with Taming of the Shrew, representing a transition towards

legitimate theatre while pulling together theatre forces within Portland. Her actions, as we

will see in the next chapter, solidified a home for the company and almost gave Oregon a

permanent State Theatre.

Speaking to a fellow professor in an interview taken in a hospital bedroom at the

end of her life, Whitcomb spoke of the resilience and tenacity of her “Federal Theatre days.” She equated her perseverance with her work in the FTP, saying, “I could put a

play on in a waist basket.” Indeed, the Oregon Unit performed in a wide assortment of

borrowed venues and parks until their move to the Elks Temple Theatre in 1938, and this

was primarily due to Whitcomb’s ability to negotiate with clubs, fraternal organizations,

theatres, schools and the City of Portland for performance space.64 Newspapers measured

the Oregon Unit’s success by attendance figures, with the three plays featured in this

chapter Sloping West, Night Beat, and Shrew topping 35,000 patrons, respectfully. The

story behind the vaudeville performances in the parks lies in the East Side communities

54

they served, embracing the FTP and New Deal values of regionalism and service to a

working class audience. Whitcomb and her actors were a part of the working class, and

their resilience and resolve to make their neighbors laugh in desperate times harkens back to an earlier age when vaudevillians came from the people as “the voice of the city.”65

Notes

1 “Vaudeville ‘Back,’ says Dancer,” Oregon Daily Journal (Portland), June 8, 1937, 14.

2 “Vaudeville Liked Here Says Actor,” Oregon Daily Journal, June 30, 1937, 6.

3 de Rohan, First Summer Theatre, 10.

4 Flanagan, Arena, 134 and Whitman, Willson. 1937. Bread and circuses; a study of Federal theatre. (New York: Oxford University Press.), 31.

5 Flanagan, Arena, 297.

6 Witham, Federal Theatre, 33.

7 Flanagan, Arena, 67.

8 Flanagan, Arena, 65-7, 202-3, 304, and Witham, Federal Theatre, 35.

9 Andrew L. Erdman, Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals and the Mass Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2004), 60.

10 “The Smoker,” Oregon Daily Journal, July 27, 1936, 1.

11 “Performance for Navy,” Portland News Telegram, August 5, 1936.

12 “’Here You Are’ To Feature Clown.” St. Helens Sentinel-Mist, May 6, 1938, 1.

13 Robert M. Lewis, From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830-1910 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 123-4.

14 Robert C. Toll, On With the Show!: The First Century of Show Business in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 63.

55

15 Charles W. Stein, American Vaudeville As Seen By Its Contemporaries (New York: Knopf, 1984), 15-20.

16 “WPA Entertainers At Shrine Hospital.” Oregon Daily Journal. July 22, 1936, 28.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 de Rohan, First Summer Theatre, 31.

20 Trav S.D., No Applause-Just Throw Money (New York: Faber and Faber), 90.

21 Lewis, Traveling Show, 336.

22 Toll, On with the Show, 298.

23 “WPA Entertainers At Shrine Hospital.” Oregon Daily Journal. July 22, 1936, 28.

24 “Strongman to Feature WPA Show Saturday,” Portland News Telegram, October 24, 1936, 11.

25 U.S. Census Report, 1940, Bureau of the Census, 964.

26 Real Estate Appraisals, A Transcription of Lectures and Discussions Given at the Real Estate Classes of the General Education Division, Oregon State System of Higher Education, in Cooperation with the Portland Realty Boart, 1939, Moores Papers, 144, quoted in E. Kimbark MacColl, The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon, 1915-1950 (need pub info), 539-40.

27 MacColl, Growth, 539.

28 MacColl, Growth, 199.

29 MacColl, Growth, 535.

30 Roark Bradford, “The Christmas Sermon,” Esquire, New York. December, 1936, 62.

31 Sterling A. Brown, “A Century of Negro Portraiture in American Literature,” The Massachusetts Review 7.1 (Winter 1966), 74.

56

32 Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press.), 7.

33 Brown, “Negro Portraiture,” 74.

34 Eric Lott, Love and Theft, 7.

35 Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1931), 100.

36 Ibid.

37 Bradford, “Christmas Sermon,” 62.

38 “Federal Theater’s Latest Free Play Awaits Bookings,” Portland News Telegram, December 2, 1936, 8.

39 Ibid.

40 “Play to Thousands,” Oregon Daily Journal, December 22, 1936,12.

41 Federal Theatre Project (U.S.), Highlights of the First Production Conference of the New York City Unit of the Federal Theatre (New York: Play Bureau, Federal Theatre Project, 1936), 4.

42 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at Bonneville Dam, Oregon (September 28, 1937),” The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid= 15469.

43Will Rogers, Arthur Frank Wertheim, Barbara Bair, Steven K. Gragert, and M. Jane Johansson. 1996. The Papers of Will Rogers. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 295.

44 MacColl, Growth, 496.

45 “Federal Theatre’s Play to Continue,” Oregon Daily Journal, February 9, 1937, 10.

46 Ibid.

47 “Federal Theatre Play Draws Many,” Oregon Daily Journal, February 17, 1937, 11.

57

48 Ibid and “Daily Performances Set for WPA Musical Comedy,” Portland News Telegram, February 15, 1937, 2.

49 Ibid.

50 Robert D. Johnston, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003), 62.

51 Flanagan, Arena, 45.

52 J.C. Nugent, It's a Great Life (New York: Dial Press, 1940), 188.

53 “Borrowing Authorize.”, Oregon Sunday Journal, May 30, 1937, section 4, 2.

54 Hallie Flanagan, Instructions: Federal Theatre Projects (Washington, D.C.: Works Progress Administration, 1935), 10.

55 Flanagan, Instructions, 1.

56 Alice Margarida, “Two ‘Shrews’: Productions by Lunt/Fontanne (1935) and H. K. Ayliff (1927)” The Drama Review: TDR 25.2 (1981), 87-100.

57 Roy S. Waldau, Vintage Years of the Theatre Guild, 1928-1939 (Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1972), 211, and Jared Brown, The Fabulous Lunts: A Biography of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne (New York: Atheneum, 1986), 223-225.

58 “Present Comedy by Shakespeare,” Portland News Telegram, July 13, 1937, 3.

59 “Shrew Opening at Laurelhurst Park.”, Portland News Telegram, July 7, 1937, 15.

60 “More Show Gossip”, Oregon Sunday Journal, July 11, 1937, sect 4, 2.

61 Portland News Telegram, July 7, 1937.

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid.

64 Whitcomb, interview.

65 Trav S.D., 74

58

CHAPTER III

THE MAKING OF THE MODEL UNIT

“Know your right, then forge ahead and let shoe-pinched critics yowl where they may.”1 Hallie Flanagan, November 1937

Ralph B. Lloyd was a Portland outsider, a multi-millionaire oilman from Ventura,

California, who saw Portland as a land of promise and investment opportunity, especially on the East Side, where landmarks like the Lloyd District and the Lloyd Center bear his name today. In his book The Growth of a City, E. Kimbark MacColl called Lloyd’s actions “the most ambitious program of urban land acquisition by one person in

Portland’s history.”2 Lloyd’s dream was to “build America’s greatest ‘little city within a city’” in a residential development that would include a grand hotel, golf course, shopping center, a professional baseball stadium and a civic art center. Lloyd had an architect draft the “Proposed civic center for the City of Portland, Oregon” in 1931 to gain public support and private investors for his plan.3

Lloyd’s civic art center and the entire “little city” was intended for the high class elite, with Portland businessmen working on the West Side living in the East Side. Lloyd struggled for years to find investors for the idea at the beginning of the Great Depression, but by 1937, with over $3 million invested in the land and development, the only structure completed was the golf course and an excavated pit where the grand hotel was supposed to stand. State WPA Director Griffith embraced Lloyd’s idea of an art center shortly before the completion of Timberline Lodge and with the Oregon Unit needing a space to perform, he began looking into such a building in Portland. By 1937, the Oregon

Unit had proved they could draw tens of thousands of patrons, and Griffith saw a need,

59

not to serve the elite, but instead the masses needing to be entertained in Portland.

Lloyd’s plan for an Art Center in Portland seemed the perfect next step for the Oregon

Unit.

This chapter will follow the formation of the idea of the WPA Art Center and the

steps Whitcomb and Griffith took to gain WPA approval. Like Lloyd’s dream, the WPA

Art Center had to overcome many obstacles in Portland to gain the support of investors

and sponsors. For the Oregon Unit, a theatre space would relieve the pressure of constant touring, provide a place where actor training could take place, and give a dedicated performance venue where the company could produce legitimate theatre worthy of the borrowed professional FTP talent coming to the Oregon Unit from California. The negotiations that Whitcomb would enter into with the Portland Civic and the University of Oregon to obtain the Art Center held the promise of security for the Oregon Unit, even if Congress eliminated the FTP budget. The plans elevated the importance of the Oregon

Unit in the minds of Oregon State WPA administrators and national FTP administration, transforming the troupe into a model unit for the rest of the country. Out of the negotiations, Whitcomb reconcieved what theatre in a WPA Art Center would look like, attempted to preserve a piece of Flanagan’s dream, and maintain a job in the WPA, after the demise of the FTP.

Merging Little Theatre Amateurs with Professional Vaudevillians

For 23 months, from July 1936 to May 1938, the Oregon Unit did not have a theatre space, but instead moved their productions daily from place to place, sometimes performing in theatres and auditoriums, but more often in schools, gymnasiums, fraternal

60

clubs, parks and hotel ballrooms. At the same time, the Portland Civic was also homeless,

performing primarily in auditoriums and theatres, but as the numbers of available theatre

spaces decreased with theatres in Portland becoming dedicated movie houses, fewer good

performance venues were available. In February 1937, around the time the Oregon Unit

was performing the play Sloping West at the Portland Public Market to attract patrons to a

WPA informational display, Whitcomb and Griffith began negotiations into the

possibility of a merger with the Portland Civic.* The Oregon Unit was popular, with ten thousand patrons drawn to the Sloping West performances at the Public Market, so

negotiations began with the Portland Civic about a shared permanent space that would

culminate into a WPA Art Center proposal. The month-long run in the Public Market (the

Oregon Unit’s longest run in a single location at the time) allowed Whitcomb and Griffith

time to draft and present an Oregon Unit merger proposal to the Portland Civic board of

directors. The theatre troupes needed to stop spending energy moving scenery and costumes from place to place and focus their attention on producing theatre.

Both theatre troupes were desperate to find a permanent space in which they could perform as well as a space where Portland Civic drama classes and Oregon Unit

vaudevillian “retraining” could take place. The Portland Civic Board of Directors

discussed the merger proposal drafted by Whitcomb and Griffith in February 1937.

Under the terms of the plan, the Portland Civic “would present […] plays as before, under the name of the Federal Theatre, and the Federal Theatre Project would pay rent, directors’ salaries, production expenses, etc.” The board “unanimously resolved” to create a committee “to work out further details with the WPA office and report back.”4

* The play Sloping West is covered at length in Chapter Four. 61

The board’s acceptance of the possible merger, and the formation of an exploratory

committee, indicated a willingness on their part to connect with the Oregon Unit at an

opportune time for both theatres. However, within ten days, at a special meeting of the

Executive Committee, Portland Civic Board President Mrs. Charles Hart explained the

deal was doubtful, “owing to changes in policies contemplated by WPA headquarters in

Washington.”5 The “changes” were due to drastic cuts to the FTP budget, making the

merger between the theatres tenuous.† Each year as Congress debated the federal budget,

the FTP was under the threat of elimination, and this knowledge may have led the board

to question their alliance with the Oregon Unit. This reasoning on behalf of the board

may account for many of the near-mergers between the two theatre troupes, with the

board members seeing the financial incentive of free FTP labor, but also afraid to attach

the Portland Civic to a government agency under the constant threat of elimination.

Whitcomb’s first steps in the negotiation, and all further negotiations with the

Portland Civic, were fraught with unresolved personal and professional issues which

stemmed from her work and departure as Portland Civic Artistic Director in 1930. In

Arena, Flanagan quotes Whitcomb saying that the Portland Civic Board of Directors

were, “… outwardly polite […] but inwardly the Civic Theatre people look down on us

because we’re W.P.A. and our project people look down on them because they’re

amateurs.”6 Professionally the board was “outwardly polite” to Whitcomb, because she

served as an instructor with the Portland Civic Theatre School, was on the Portland Civic

Education and Play selection committees and was one of the founders of the theatre.

Personally, Whitcomb felt she had to cope with “jealousy and ensuing petty persecution”

† The protests in cutbacks by the FTP in mid-May 1937, due to possible budget cuts by Congress, was highlighted by the famous protest performance of The Cradle Will Rock directed by Orson Welles and John Houseman (Flanagan, Arena, 201). 62

from members of the board, constantly “stepping around unreasonable personal feelings”

when working with them.7 In a letter to E. C. Mabie, Whitcomb writes that the Portland

Civic “fails to function in the way I have in mind but would be infinitely dog-in-the-

mangerish were anyone else to try to [create a competing theatre in Portland].”8

Whitcomb’s literary reference follows Æsop’s fable, where the hungry dog in the manger

lays upon the hay, not allowing the horse to eat, while unable to eat the hay himself.

Whitcomb, whose ideas were not accepted by the Portland Civic from the first years of

the company, had an idea for the Portland Civic’s community connection, but had no

voice to change their situation, even as an instructor in the Portland Civic Theatre School.

Meanwhile, the Portland Civic would not let the Oregon Unit and the WPA

change the theatrical landscape of Portland. The “WPA…amateur” tension between the organizations was the same tension found in the FTP administration attitude towards vaudeville performance, which descended from the Little Theatre Movement. Whitcomb and the Portland Civic’s Little Theatre ideals were in alignment about the kind of theatre the community needs and ideas surrounding artistic integrity and the cultural elevation of society through theatre. They wanted theatre to do more than entertain, they desired to elevate and enlighten the community. Whitcomb’s desire to move the Oregon Unit into the area of legitimate theatre created a synergy with the Portland Civic that allowed her to continue to work for the Portland Civic Theatre School and to negotiate the merger between the two companies. Whitcomb’s break with the Portland Civic may have resulted from a difference of opinion about how theatre should serve in the community.

Whitcomb believed in performance for the masses, and the artistic leaders of the Portland

Civic served the high class of Portland to which they belonged.

63

Nevertheless, Whitcomb was determined to create ties between the theatres and

by March 1937, she returned to the board with a “talent and resource-sharing proposal”

for a Portland Civic and subsequent Oregon Unit production of Taming of the Shrew. The

timing of the two productions of Taming of the Shrew were close enough together, with

the Portland Civic production scheduled for May and the Oregon Unit production

planned for a July opening, that logistically the idea would work. At the same time, the

productions were so different, with the Portland Civic’s play classically produced on a

proscenium stage, while the Oregon Unit incorporated vaudeville performance into the

play on an outdoor stage. Portland Civic minutes in March reflect Whitcomb’s request for

the Federal Theatre to furnish “without charge […] certain music and other assistance in

the way of personnel.” The Oregon Unit had its own 14-piece orchestra, an operational

scene shop and a team of seamstresses from the WPA Grout school to construct

costumes. “In return for this, the Federal Project desired to use the scenery and costumes

and use as much of the cast as might be able to serve in producing the same play during

the summer months.”9

At a time of great need, with the Portland Civic lacking facilities to build scenery or costumes, Whitcomb offered Federal Theatre assistance. The sharing of resources she

suggested, would be advantageous to both theatres, since ninety percent of the Oregon

Unit’s budget was spent on labor rather than materials, as Whitcomb said in an interview

conducted in 1975:

[I] had a limitless costume department because the sewing project then, which was not one of the arts—but there it was…. skilled women, who needed the work, were on relief and my problem in budgeting for costumes was material, because that cost money. But, if I could wrangle the material, I could have all the workers

64

I needed. There was no problem on costumes.‡10

The deal was also advantageous for the Portland Civic, with skilled WPA seamstresses eager to work on period costumes. Whitcomb’s timing of the proposal indicates an attempt to foster a relationship between the two companies, to demonstrate to the board and to Griffith that she was putting her best foot forward. Unfortunately, with the large group of employees to coordinate, including the Oregon Unit orchestra, by March 10,

1937, Hart told the Portland Civic Theatre board that WPA administrators found the

“merger would not be feasible.”11 Although the Portland Civic was amicable to such a

sharing of resources, Whitcomb was unable to work out the logistics among WPA

personnel, especially the Oregon Federal Music Project.

Whitcomb’s idea to share talent with the Portland Civic was one that she

perceived as a necessity. She desired to produce her vaudeville Taming of the Shrew, and

while she had the talent to incorporate the vaudeville concept and an actress in Madge

Wynne who could execute the leading part of Katherina, she felt the talent was not

available in the troupe to cast the leading character of Petruchio. She wanted Don Porter

to play the part of Petruchio, one of her former students at the Portland Civic Theatre

School who was working consistently for the Portland Civic in 1937. She could not hire

Porter outright because he did not qualify for relief, and the Oregon Unit had reached

their allotment of non-relief personnel. Whitcomb would not let the unsuccessful

negotiation with the Portland Civic deter her, and before the onset of summer in Portland,

she opened a new negotiation with FTP administration with the goal of hiring Porter. Her

vaudeville Taming of the Shrew would open with or without a deal with the Portland

‡ At 88 years of age working at Diablo Valley College in California, Whitcomb was the oldest active professor in the nation (Whitcomb, DVC interview). 65

Civic.

In May 1937, a plan drafted by Whitcomb and Deputy Director of the FTP and the Western Region, J. Howard Miller, requested the transfer of personnel from large theatre projects to smaller ones. Upon approval by the FTP administration in Washington,

D.C., Whitcomb reported to the Oregon Daily Journal that up to ten additional actors,

dancers and technicians were arriving with the hope “that the effect of the transfers will

be a general strengthening of the Federal Theatre throughout the nation.”12 The intent of

Whitcomb’s plan was to strengthen smaller units like Oregon’s with legitimate theatre

talent. J. Howard Miller was clear when he assured the Sunday Journal that the borrowed

actors “will make possible other legitimate productions,” meaning a decrease in

vaudeville productions.13 The implication of “strengthening” the Oregon Unit through the

elimination of vaudeville from the repertoire was significant because Miller was deciding

that enlightened legitimate text-based performance was preferable to illegitimate, non-

text-based vaudevillian performance. FTP administration, starting with Whitcomb and

empowered by Miller, were throwing off the vaudeville performances that helped get the

FTP quickly up and running, forming a basis of entertainment that was popular with the

public. Whitcomb’s actor-sharing idea was born from a desire to have Porter play the

character of Petruchio, but it changed the relationship of the Oregon Unit to its vaudeville

actors. With the transferred actors coming straight from legitimate drama in larger cities,

Whitcomb’s plan placed legitimate theatre in front of Portland audiences, while reducing

and finally eliminating the number of vaudeville productions.

As Whitcomb was working out the deal with Miller, Griffith was working behind

the scenes to make the Art Center a reality. He continued to see a potential sponsor for

66

the project in the Portland Civic and pushed Whitcomb to resume negotiations. In a letter

to Mabie in May 1937, Whitcomb wrote,

The ideas of a merger between Federal Theatre and Civic Theatre has remained very strongly in Mr. Griffith’s mind ever since he first suggested it. When he spoke of the new building, he again brought up the merger.14

At the time, the WPA Art Project was constructing all of the furnishings inside the

Timberline Lodge, preparing for a late summer opening, and Griffith saw the importance

of placing all of Oregon’s Federal One projects under one roof. Griffith was trying to

work out the same kind of sponsorship deal he negotiated with the Portland Winter Sports

Association for the Timberline Lodge, but needed a donation of land, like the land

donated by the U.S. Forest Service for the Timberline Lodge, and the backing of a large

government entity to get sponsors to financially commit to the idea.

Meanwhile, the University of Oregon had a stake in the success of the Art Center

through their educational relationship with the Portland Civic. The Portland Civic Theatre

School was affiliated with the University of Oregon, with the students receiving UO credit for their coursework. The Portland Civic’s annual meeting report states, “During the scholastic year of 1937-38 The Portland Civic Theatre School held classes in conjunction with the University of Oregon beginning the year with 11 classes, nine of which continues through the three quarters. The highest registration any one term was

275. Besides these classes, there were two children’s classes and one high school class.”15 Griffith needed the Portland Civic because the University of Oregon provided

the kind of prestige, like that of the U.S. Forest Service for Timberline Lodge, which could bring financial sponsors to the project to make the Art Center a reality in Portland.

Griffith and Whitcomb drew up plans for the Art Center in May 1937 and entered

67

into negotiations with the Portland Civic and the University of Oregon. With Congress

demanding balanced budgets, the WPA looked to sponsorships, with funding for

materials for projects coming from organizations like the Portland Civic and the

University of Oregon to make up the cost of budget shortfalls, while the WPA supplied

labor. Without sponsorships, the Art Center was too costly and would be dead on arrival in Washington, D.C. With the economy in a slight upswing, the Portland Civic was in the middle of a capitol campaign for a permanent theatre space. Under Griffith’s plan, which

Whitcomb described in a letter to Mabie, the University of Oregon as a sponsor would

contribute “a substantial sum to materials” while the Portland Civic would hold off their

own plans to renovate a downtown movie house until September 1st, when the State WPA

office would know if WPA administration in Washington approved the idea. Once the

Art Center gained approval from the WPA, as a co-sponsor the Portland Civic would contribute the money raised from the capital campaign for the renovated movie house to the materials cost for the Art Center. Whitcomb described the facility,

An auditorium seating about 500, with ample and well-equipped stage would be a feature of this building. In addition, I have specified rehearsal rooms, classrooms, and a “Blue Room”; all of this presumably sufficient to care for the rehearsal and production needs of Federal Theatre, Civic Theatre, and Civic Theatre School.16

“The Blue Room” was a space used by the Portland Civic and was one of the first

“theatre in the round” configurations in the United States. By bringing the University of

Oregon and the Portland Civic into the plan as sponsors, Griffith hoped to create a facility that would streamline Federal One projects in Oregon, ultimately reducing costs by eliminating all of the rental spaces used by each agency around the city of Portland.

At the time of the letter, the Oregon Unit was producing Anton Chekov’s one act,

The Boor. Dean Alfred J. Powers of the University of Oregon Extension saw the

68

production as “a model play,” and he told Whitcomb that such examples of Russian

theatre could make the Oregon Unit a “demonstration unit” for the Art Center Theatre.

The Oregon Unit, they mused, could travel to other WPA Art Centers around the state and engage in “discussion and demonstration sessions,” to educate children and theatre organizations. She wrote, “I shall be prepared to go to some lengths to cooperate with

Dean Powers in this idea of his, hoping it is going in the direction of the state theatre which, as you know, interests me deeply.”17 The idea of using the Art Center as a State

Theatre came from Powers, and this idea would permeate the negotiations and grow with

the Portland Civic in the coming years. As a demonstration Unit, the State Theatre idea

made the Oregon Unit a vehicle to perform and teach theatre in communities throughout

Oregon.

As the relationship between Powers, Griffith and the Portland Civic Board of

Directors grew, Whitcomb saw an opportunity to continue the Federal Theatre at the state

level, writing in 1937, “I also see in it a possible continuance of a portion of Federal

Theatre, should the National Federal Theatre close.”18 statement demonstrates the

constant threat of elimination the FTP was under. In the Art Center she saw an

opportunity for the continuation of the Oregon Unit after the elimination of the national

FTP organization. This was not foresight, but an understanding of a constant budgetary

threat by congress. The Art Center was mutually beneficial; it would provide the Portland

Civic a permanent theatre that they would fully control if the FTP closed, allow the

University of Oregon Extension to increase its presence in the city of Portland, and the

Oregon Unit would survive the demise of the FTP taking their work on tour around

Oregon. The relationship between the Oregon Unit and the Portland Civic represented a

69 future theatre running under state, rather than federal, auspices.

All of the parties involved in the Art Center—the Oregon Unit, the Portland Civic

Executive Committee, WPA officials and the University of Oregon—attended a meeting at the end of May 1937, and every organization had an opportunity to explain where they fit into the plan. WPA State Supervisor T. J. Edmunds§ gave an overview of the entire project and how Federal One projects in Portland would use the building, while Powers explained how the University, through the Portland Civic Theatre School, would link

University of Oregon coursework to the School’s class offerings.19 President Hart asked the Portland Civic Board of Directors Executive Committee to approve a resolution in favor of the project, placing further plans for a permanent home for the Portland Civic on hold pending approval of the Art Center by the WPA offices in Washington. The motion was unanimously resolved:

The Board of Directors go on record as favoring the project, and that further plans for the Civic Theatre for any permanent housing be held up at least until September 1st, which was the estimated date on which we might reasonably expect a decision from Washington as to whether or not the project had been approved.20

Edmunds, representing the WPA, suggested the date of September 1, giving what he believed was ample time for WPA administrators in Washington, D.C. to evaluate the proposal. At the same time the Portland Civic had raised some of the money to renovate a downtown building, and many on the Board may have felt that waiting, rather than implementing a capital campaign was a waste of time. The board remained true to the

September 1 deadline, a date that proved detrimental to the momentum Whitcomb and

Griffith generated for the project.

§ While the minutes reflect a “Mr. Edmunds of the WPA” gave the plan overview, it is safe to assume that T. J. Edmunds, Oregon WPA State Supervisor, was charged with the job. T.J. Edmunds was in charge of the Historical Records Survey Program and wrote the preface to the WPA text Oregon, End of the Trail. 70

National Attention Transforms Vaudevillians

The summer of 1937 was a turning point for Whitcomb and the Oregon Unit. The vaudeville troupe was finishing its first year, operating up to that point with little national oversight from Washington, D.C., or the FTP Regional headquarters in Los Angeles.

With the lack of oversight, the Oregon Unit played 10-acts of vaudeville to sponsoring organizations across Portland, created several productions attended by tens of thousands of Portlanders, and toured in surrounding towns performing plays about the history and people of Oregon. Whitcomb’s need to produce the kind of legitimate theatre found in the

Little Theatre Movement, coupled with Griffith’s need to find the sponsorship for a dedicated WPA Art Center in Portland, prompted tighter associations with FTP and WPA administration which changed the kind of work presented by the Oregon Unit. Following the activities in the summer of 1937, the Oregon Unit would never be the same again.

In July 1937, Flanagan hosted the First Federal Summer Theatre Conference at

Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. As a professor, Flanagan had gained national prestige for her Vassar Experimental Theatre at the college before taking on her role in the FTP. The goal of the conference was to bring state directors together in training and rehearsal technique and to discuss issues that occurred over the first year of

FTP operation, as well as possible solutions. Two items on the Conference agenda concerned the path of the Oregon Unit, Whitcomb’s proposed borrowing plan for actors between Units, and the discussion among administrators of the “vaudeville problem.”

The conclusion drawn from these discussions changed Whitcomb’s decisions on behalf of the vaudevillians in the Oregon Unit, and focused her attention on the needs of the

FTP nationally.

71

Borrowing actors from other FTP units was not easy. A tremendous amount of

effort, and paperwork, went into transferring FTP workers across state lines, what Hallie

Flanagan called “a flexible working arrangement.”21 FTP state directors discussed and

formalized Whitcomb’s borrowing plan into a official “loan and coordinating bureau”

developed “to facilitate exchange of personnel.”22 Whitcomb would receive assistance

nationally from administrators that would help process borrowed actors and directors,

freeing up time and effort to seek out the loan actors and move all the paperwork through

proper government channels. The approval was significant because the highest levels of

the administration supported her ideas and the Oregon Unit would begin to see immediate

help from borrowed talent.

Meanwhile, a meeting to tackle the “vaudevillian problem” at the Conference

changed the course of the Oregon Unit for the next year. The meeting chaired by

Flanagan and attended by several state directors, “began with the premise that it was

useless to attempt further to revive vaudeville” and asked how vaudevillians could be

“fitted into a new theatre form that will promise rehabilitation in private employment?”

The idea of rehabilitation of vaudevillians, which was not part of Whitcomb’s job over

the first year, would from then on become part of the Oregon Unit’s mission. William

Sully, retired vaudeville dancer and director from the New York Federal Theatre Unit,

shared Whitcomb’s belief that half of old-line vaudevillians “were not sufficiently

versatile to act in other forms.” Sully, who devised an FTP musical vaudeville review

titled Machine Age in New York, felt that their rehabilitation into private employment was “not practicable.”23 Many state directors represented at the Conference shared

Whitcomb’s feeling about the vaudevillians, and because they qualified for relief, they

72

needed a way to utilize their talents in new and modern ways. The solution, which

became official following the Conference, was to place the vaudevillians into new work

that highlighted their talents, namely children’s theatre and Living Newspaper

productions.

Flanagan, and many state directors in the vaudeville meeting, saw the

vaudevillians as unable to act in scripted performances; children’s theatre and the

vaudeville-inspired performances of the Living Newspaper were seen as the only useful

vehicles for their talents. Flanagan’s overall plan for the FTP included the movement of

vaudevillians into children’s theatre before the state directors raised the topic at the

meeting. In the opening speech of the Summer Theatre Conference Flanagan said, “Now

we have time to consider plans for our Children’s Theatres, our necessity for using

vaudeville technique in ways entertaining to a modern audience.”24 Vaudeville, it would

seem, was entertainment for an older generation and not entertaining to the “modern

audience,” while the “technique” of vaudeville was a talent only children could enjoy.

Personally, Flanagan did not care for children’s theatre, as she admits in Arena, finding adults acting in children’s performances “embarrassing” to watch.25 She and the state

directors did not consider straight vaudeville entertainment worthy of the FTP,

disregarding the success witnessed by Oregon Unit vaudeville in Portland as well as other

FTP vaudeville performances around the nation. As long as vaudevillians were serving

the needs of children, with talents that were acceptable to children and not adults, the

state directors believed vaudevillians were serving a function in the FTP. Without such

theatre forms, the state directors simply saw talented older vaudevillians in their Units as

a problem.

73

The two ideas, borrowing actors and the suggested “rehabilitation” of vaudevillians

through children’s theatre, were both detrimental to vaudevillians wishing to continue

performing the routines for which they were known. Borrowing actors would limit the

amount of stage time for the vaudevillians by increasing the number of legitimate plays.

Like rehabilitation programs for incarcerated prisoners, the goal of the FTP rehabilitation

was to reform the vaudevillians through [acting] instruction and assist them in starting a

normal career [in the legitimate theatre]. With the ability for small FTP Units to borrow

actors and talent, Oregon became the testing ground for a children’s theatre solution to

the FTP vaudeville problem. Whitcomb’s decision to apply both programs changed the

play selection of Oregon Unit, incorporating children’s theatre as well as Living

Newspapers, and increased the number of legitimate plays due to borrowed talent.

Whitcomb’s relationships with administrators in the FTP improved because of the

Summer Conference, and she became professionally acquainted with Flanagan. In a letter

sent on Vassar College letterhead from the Summer Conference, Whitcomb wrote,

Mrs. Flanagan holds up in every respect. She’s grand. More of an experience to me than I had hoped for. Whatever disappointments this session holds for any of us she doesn’t fail.26

Earlier in the letter, she writes of her disappointment with “a survey of Federal Theatre” at the Summer Theatre. This “survey” may be the production of the Living Newspaper,

One-Third of a Nation, produced by the state and federal administrators, or her interactions with other State Directors at the Summer Theatre.** While the Vassar

College experience was not everything Whitcomb expected, her admiration for Flanagan

** In the letter Whitcomb is asking Mabie to come to Iowa City so they can talk about several items that are weighing heavy on her thoughts. “Ideas for theatre in the West, a survey (to a certain extent disappointing) of Federal Theatre, one very personal thing about a superior officer (not Flanagan) that I would feel like discussing with no one but you. I am bewildered, questioning, inspired, all three.” 74

rings through the letter. Flanagan understood Whitcomb’s struggles as the only woman to

hold a state director position. Flanagan also saw potential in the Oregon Unit to become a

“model unit” as Miller had suggested earlier in the year. With the possibility of a new Art

Center on the horizon in Portland, Flanagan must have seen great promise for the Oregon

Unit. Whitcomb returned from Poughkeepsie and Vassar College with a renewed purpose

to transform the Oregon Unit, starting with the vaudevillians.

“Rehabilitation” Through Children’s Theatre

In the intervening months between May and September 1937, there was no

movement at all on the Art Center proposal in Washington.27 The September 1st deadline

imposed on the Portland Civic within the Art Center proposal passed without word from

the WPA administration. Without approval from Washington, on September 8, 1937, the board sent formal notification to the University of Oregon that it would withdraw support from the WPA project and move forward on a new building capitol campaign.28

The need for a permanent Oregon Unit performance space did not go away when

the Portland Civic backed out of the Art Center, but with their exit, the University of

Oregon dropped out of the proposal as well. Despite the setback, Whitcomb and Griffith

continued to keep lines of communication open and work towards an Art Center deal.

Whitcomb served on the Portland Civic Education Committee and as a judge in the

Portland Civic full-length play contest, while Griffith worked on a land donation for the

Art Center that would lower the cost of the project, bringing the Portland Civic and the

University of Oregon back to the negotiating table.29

Flanagan visited the Oregon Unit in November of 1937, and stayed for over a

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week with regional director Ole Ness.†† The administrators, upon seeing a command

performance of Taming of the Shrew, called Yasha Frank to Oregon to discuss the

Summer Conference decision to place a children’s theatre solution on the vaudeville

problem. With the inclusion of Frank by Flanagan, the Oregon Unit was used as a

laboratory where the children’s theatre solution was tested and spread across the rest of

the FTP.

Yasha Frank was a proven children’s theatre writer and director from Los

Angeles.30 While trained in the theatre, with an apprenticeship at the Roxy and Capital

theatre in New York, Frank made his mark working on children’s entertainment under

producer B. P. Schulberg at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.31 Frank became the

National Director of FTP Children’s Theatre after transforming Flanagan’s view of

children’s theatre on a visit to Timberline Lodge. Frank had “gifts of legerdemain,”

according to Flanagan, and was outspoken about the power of theatre to educate.32

Before her transformational talk with Frank, Flanagan had believed “adults acting for

children seemed to try too hard, seemed not to realize that here was an audience, ready to

believe without external nonsense.”33 Frank convinced Flanagan that the FTP needed to

educate children through the art of theatre after a discussion in a broken down car on the

cold slopes of Mount Hood. The move to bring Frank to Oregon was the beginning of his

national tour with the FTP, spreading Frank’s adaptations of classic tales, his ability to

use the talents of vaudevillians and skill as a stage director across the nation in such plays

as Pinocchio and Hansel and Gretel. Frank came to the Oregon Unit through Whitcomb’s

†† The Telegram and the Journal have Flanagan arriving on November 6, and Flanagan writes of an experience being stuck on Mount Hood with Yasha Frank on a trip to Timberline Lodge (Arena 298-99). The Journal writes of Frank’s arrival on November 13 (ODJ 11/13/1937, 5). In order for Flanagan to have a conversation in November with Frank she must have visited Portland from November 6-14. 76

talent-borrowing plan to start a vaudevillian “rehabilitation program” through children’s

theatre that would move around the country to Units facing a similar “problem.” By

applying the borrowing program and rehabilitation plan the Oregon Unit demonstrated

“model unit” status through its contribution to the greater good of the FTP nationally.

Exactly how Whitcomb felt about losing artistic control of the Oregon Unit is

unclear. What is clear is that the decision to place Frank into the position, in the meeting

on Mount Hood, was made by Flanagan and Western Regional Director Ole Ness in

consultation with Whitcomb. All three attended the Summer Theatre Conference months

before, where the idea of using children’s theatre as a vehicle for vaudevillians was

explored. Whitcomb knew Frank’s work in Portland was the first step in a larger program

to connect children’s theatre to other FTP units, and perhaps, that Frank’s time in

Portland was going to be short. It is unknown, in letters to Mabie or in the Portland Civic

archive, if she felt pushed aside or enjoyed the break from directing, but she did engage

more actively in Portland Civic executive board meetings and in conversations around the

Art Center.

In his first Portland newspaper interview, Frank was clear that he was “attendant

on complete reorganization of the federal project and a change of program.”34 Frank took

over the directing responsibilities from Whitcomb, moving her strictly into an

administrative role when he arrived; canceling all planned performances and placing the actors into “rehabilitation” training and rehearsals for his adaptation of Pinocchio. Before

Frank’s arrival, Whitcomb’s primary job was to direct productions and find venues in which the troupe could perform, which also involved procuring sponsorships from the organizations donating space or money to fund the rental of facilities for performance.

77

With Frank’s entrance, the Oregon Unit focused on training vaudeville actors for

children’s theatre. The plan to implement children’s theatre nationally under Frank and

for the Oregon Unit to begin producing legitimate drama required a permanent home. By

the end of 1937, Whitcomb’s job changed from directing and booking space and sponsors

for the touring vaudeville company to creating a legitimate theatre company working to

secure a permanent space with the Portland Civic.

With the inclusion of Frank in the Oregon Unit in November 1937, Whitcomb

was able to work on the administrative negotiation around acquiring a permanent space,

serving on Portland Civic committees and attending board meetings. She had those above

her working towards a permanent solution as well, with Griffith acquiring land for the

Art Center, and Flanagan personally invested in the success of the entire operation.

Unfortunately, as Frank announced his plans to bring his Pinocchio to Portland, the

Portland Civic objected to the play selection, demanding that the star director choose another work. The demand and subsequent debate over the play brought all the parties involved in the Art Center deal to the table at a very delicate time and split allegiances between WPA administrators in Oregon.

An Art Center Stumbling Block

Portland Civic President Mrs. Charles Hart complained of unfair competition by the Oregon Unit at a meeting with Flanagan on November 10, 1938, while the latter was in Portland. The complaint centered on Frank’s production of Pinocchio, which conflicted with the production of Pinocchio by The Junior League opening scheduled

December 1937. Following the meeting with Flanagan, the Junior League of Portland,

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working under the umbrella organization of the Portland Civic, lodged an unfair

competition complaint with all of the organizations in the Art Center deal, including the

WPA, FTP administration, the Oregon Unit and the University of Oregon. The complaint of unfair competition was nothing new for Flanagan, who was “not in favor of [the

Portland Civic] continuing with [Junior League] plans,” insisting that the Junior League was the organization who should stop production, not the FTP.35 Flanagan was

committed to Frank’s children’s theatre program, and the complaint by the Junior League

could derail the plans before they began. Despite Flanagan’s objection, the Portland Civic

Board carried a motion to fulfill their obligation to the Junior League and move ahead

with plans for Pinocchio.36

The board brought Griffith into the conflict, and with all of the parties involved in

the Art Center against Frank’s production, he was in a very precarious position. A special

meeting of the Portland Civic executive committee was held a week later attended by

Dean Alfred Powers of the University of Oregon Extension. The minutes state:

After a prolonged discussion Dr. Powers moved that Mrs. Hart be asked to write a letter to the state administrator of the WPA, Mr. Griffith, pointing out to him that the public implications of a double presentation of “Pinocchio” are not desirable, and that since it is impossible for the Civic Theatre and the Junior League to withdraw their presentation, that the Federal Theatre be asked to make a substitution in their choice of a children’s play.37

Griffith abdicated his decision in a letter read in a subsequent board meeting on

November 26. Griffith’s letter stated that he “turned Mrs. Hart’s letter over to Miss

Gladys Everett, Director of Women’s and Professional Projects for the WPA.”38 Everett,

who worked closely with Griffith on Timberline Lodge, was in charge of the Grout

School, which constructed many of the Oregon Unit’s costumes. Griffith may have

abdicated his decision from the state (Griffith’s position) to the federal level (Everett’s

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position) of the WPA to get around any objection raised by Flanagan, who had the clout

to overturn state administrative decisions. He may also have desired to distance himself

from the decision to remain in the good graces of the board. Despite Flanagan’s support

of Frank and the children’s theatre “rehabilitation” moving forward, Everett ruled against

the Oregon Unit and assured the board and the Junior League that the production would

be canceled. The fact that Griffith did not support Whitcomb and the Oregon Unit may

suggest how close he was to a deal to acquire land for the Art Center. Above all, Griffith

needed to foster relations with the Portland Civic and the University of Oregon, which he needed in order to complete the Art Center. ‡‡

The Oregon Unit lost the Pinocchio battle and missed the financial support of

holiday audiences, leaving their star director training vaudevillians and exploring new

plays. The Junior League opened their production of Pinocchio at the Neighbor of

Woodcraft auditorium on December 18, 1937, while the rehearsed cast of the Oregon

Unit opened nothing new, remounting ten acts of vaudeville and The Taming of the

Shrew for a couple of performances in December. Considering the Oregon Unit’s success

with Night Beat in 1936, the overruling of Flanagan by Everett and the loss of Pinocchio

were setbacks. At the same time, the tension created by the conflict between all the

parties involved forced the Oregon Unit and Griffith to reassess their situation and look

for a temporary space to house the Oregon Unit. The pressure was mounting to place

Frank’s newly adapted children’s plays in a permanent space, so Whitcomb began

looking for a building that could take a small step towards Griffith’s Art Center plan,

housing Federal One organizations under one roof.

‡‡ On the other hand, the move up the chain of command may reflect Griffith’s attitude towards children’s theatre, with the matter being of little concern to the state director of the WPA. The only available information in the Portland Civic archive on the matter is found in the meeting minutes. 80

The Elks Temple Theatre: A Legitimate Step to the Art Center

In the midst of the debate over the production of Pinocchio, the Oregon Unit was

moving forward on plans to acquire a building in downtown Portland. Griffith and

Whitcomb sent press releases divulging information about a plan to create a permanent

Federal Theatre.39 The Journal reported,

A permanent federal theatre for Oregon, to serve as a small model project for the nation, has been authorized, according to word received from Washington, D.C. Funds have been appropriated, the local office is advised for the renovations of some now unused theatre in Portland. Like theatres exist in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, and the Oregon theatre is to mirror them on a smaller scale.40

A permanent space transformed the Oregon Unit into a “model project” imitating theatres

in New York and Chicago. With the announcement made during the clash with the

Portland Civic over Pinocchio, the Oregon Unit was proclaiming that they were moving

forward with or without the Portland Civic’s involvement. The Oregon Unit was

conducting the same search as the Portland Civic for a permanent space, with the Journal stating, “[Whitcomb] has launched local production managers on an immediate search for suitable quarters.”41 Plans within the FTP proceeded apace to find a new location, with

the Journal reporting in April 1938 that the former Elks Temple would house the theatre

and many of the WPA Federal One projects.42 By housing the Federal Art Project and the

Federal Writers Project Griffith was a step closer to an Art Center designed with the needs of all of the Federal One organizations in mind. Publicity of the new Elks Temple

Theatre announced a more respectable legitimate offering, “departing radically from previous policies” to offer “a new program which will include among its production works by such renowned authors as Eugene O’Neill and Anton Chekhov.”43 This

announcement moved beyond the use of vaudevillians for children’s theatre, and required

81

the talents of several legitimate actors from larger FTP Units. The Oregon Unit would

officially split, with the vaudevillian performers assigned to “a new vaudeville show,”

arranged by Whitcomb, titled Here You Are, touring area schools and outlying towns of

St. Helens, Tualatin and Marshfield (Coos Bay). The vaudevillians, who toured school

auditoriums and gymnasiums for almost two years were never able to realize their

vaudeville performance in the new WPA theatre.

Whitcomb’s job as the state director had an unrelenting schedule, which affected

her will to continue in her position.44 The FTP demands on retraining the Oregon Unit’s

vaudevillians took her out of the production schedule that fed her creative energy.

Moving the Oregon Unit into a new repurposed theatre space shared by the Federal

Writers Project and Federal Art Project, while conforming to strict Portland building

codes for theatres was a large job. Her work to appease the Portland Civic Board of

Directors by attending board meetings, serving on committees and working the political

angles of getting the Art Center going again was extra work in her day. Negotiating with

actors borrowed from California units that would work in upcoming productions, while

performing the job of directing some of the Oregon Unit productions, weighed heavy on

her time and energy. Whitcomb began having thoughts of resignation and in a Western

Union telegram sent on May 25, 1938, Whitcomb wrote to Mabie,

AM LOOKING FOR A JOB. ANY PLACE I WOULD FIT THAT HAS A FUTURE. WE HAVE DELIGHTFUL NEW THEATRE AND ENLARGED PROGRAM HERE BUT MY ENTHUSIASM PLUS MY SALARY DO NOT BALANCE. UNCEASING DRAIN ON STRENGTH. NO VACATION AHEAD. 45

Mabie understood Whitcomb’s dilemma, because it was one he experienced and witnessed in other FTP Units, like Glen Hughes with the Seattle Unit. 46 Mabie helped

82

draft the original charter and FTP instructions with Flanagan and worked as Iowa State

Director of the FTP for a short time before resigning to continue his professorship at the

University of Iowa. Mabie understood Whitcomb’s need, but also the important work she

was enduring as state director of the Federal Theatre. The Oregon Unit was completely

consuming, evidenced by Whitcomb’s hiatus from acting instruction at the Portland Civic

Theatre School. While little is written about her joy working with students in the theatre,

her separation from teaching may have factored in to her desire to quit the Oregon Unit.

At the same time, the increased pressure and her sense of responsibility to Griffith at the

state level and Flanagan at the federal level, placed her at the fulcrum that would decide

the success or failure of the new theatre space and the potential Art Center.

The Oregon Unit was beginning to compete with the Portland Civic by producing

quality legitimate work with its borrowed professional actors from California, which

forced the Portland Civic Board to take the Oregon Unit seriously and look again at the

Art Center proposal. The Oregon Unit’s move into the Elks Temple Theatre allowed the

actors to begin producing well-attended children’s theatre productions as well as

legitimate theatre like the costume drama The Pursuit of Happiness or the courtroom

thriller Counselor at Law.47 With professionals performing and working with the Oregon

Unit, supplemented by vaudevillians playing supporting roles, the quality of their

productions increased, moving the troupe of actors above the “low art” of vaudeville.

With the Portland Civic unable to fund their own theatre space and the Oregon Unit

solidly financed by the federal government, the board changed their minds about future mergers. Because the Oregon Unit moved into the Elks Temple Theatre, the Portland

Civic was ready for the possibility of collaboration between the two theatres.

83

The Art Center Agreement Moves Forward

Constructing an Arts Center in Portland proved to be more difficult and time

consuming for Griffith than building Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. What worked in

the rugged and unpopulated area of Mount Hood, moving from proposal to completion in

less than two years, did not translate to the political landscape of Portland. The donation

of land for the Art Center needed to come through private channels, unlike the land

donation from the U.S. Forest Service for Timberline Lodge. With the Portland Civic

ready to negotiate after an unsuccessful capital campaign for a new theatre space, and

without success from the downtown business community to locate the WPA Art Center

in on the West Side of Portland, Griffith turned to for help to the man who inspired his

original idea of the Art Center, Ralph B. Lloyd.

As a Portland outsider, Lloyd struggled for over a decade to acquire the ordinance

and zoning changes needed to make his “little city within a city” possible on his East Side

property. The WPA Art Center offered Lloyd the opportunity to achieve a portion of his

dream, attracting further investment and increased infrastructure for his East Side plan

from the city of Portland. The Portland Civic was ready to join the deal for the Art

Center, and before Lloyd’s land donation was public knowledge the board was privy to the information. The Portland Civic minutes on May 20, 1938, reflect:

Mrs. Hart reported on a conversation with Mr. Drinker regarding a theatre to be built with WPA funds. A plan has been submitted to the office at Washington, DC, but there is no definite word as yet.48

A year after the board separated from the Art Center agreement the Portland Civic did not

have the funds available to build or renovate a performance space. The tip supplied by

Mr. Drinker came three months before Griffith announced Lloyd’s donation in the press,

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revealing Hart’s connection to the Portland business community.§§ Hart’s insider

information indicates movement between Griffith and Lloyd to finalize a deal on the Art

Center as early as May of 1938. Although the Portland Civic had removed themselves

from the Art Center deal, the return to the Art Center plan was announced at the annual

membership meeting, presented to the entire membership body of the Portland Civic. Mr.

Haydon, the Portland Civic Theatre School director, read his report to the membership:

… This year a plan was worked out and started … for the organization of the Oregon State Theatre, by the Portland Civic Theatre, working in cooperation with the Oregon State system of Higher Education and the Federal Theatre. The object of the State Theatre is the establishment of a library, a demonstration theatre, and a production unit to aid and advise high school dramatic departments and other groups interested in drama … The state was divided into districts which will be the centers for conferences which will be held from time to time to discuss problem of the theatre.49

Within the plan, as envisioned in the Portland Civic minutes and mirroring Dean Powers’

idea, the Oregon Unit would travel to Art Centers in Oregon and become a demonstration

theatre. Griffith was following the same path to approval with the Art Center as the

Timberline Lodge. His inclusion of Federal One music, theatre, and fine arts in the

original Timberline Lodge proposal helped move the paperwork towards approval with

WPA administration. The approved Art Center proposal mirrored that of Timberline

Lodge: to become a performance space for the retaining of Uncle Sam’s thespians.*** The

Oregon Unit would be the example, touring Oregon Art Centers and training rural

communities in the theatre arts.

The 1938 WPA Art Center sponsorship agreement for the Portland Civic and the

§§ Records from the Portland City Auditor’s office indicate that F. B. Drinker was an employee of the Lloyd Corporation in 1960. If this is the same Mr. Drinker, he was a faithful employee retained by Ralph Lloyd for over twenty years to work on the Lloyd Civic Center.

*** The proposal for the Art Center also included the construction of all furnishings by the WPA in the Arts and Crafts style, just as Timberline Lodge was fashioned. 85

University of Oregon was the same as the original proposal in 1937, with the exception of

Lloyd’s land donation. Art Center plans were drafted, artistic renderings were featured in all the major Portland newspapers and on the front page of the Oregonian, and movement was made in the planning department for improvements to Lloyd’s property.50 Those looking at the original proposal at the WPA administration offices in 1938 may have held their decision until a suitable land donation was presented. At the same time, when the

Portland Civic and the University of Oregon backed out of the deal, the WPA never had the opportunity to approve the proposal pending a land donation. If the Portland Civic had remained in the agreement, the land donation may have followed WPA approval. The

1938 agreement was more sure and solid, with Lloyd’s land donation, but because the

Portland Civic decided to break ties to the agreement, and remove the major sponsor, the

University of Oregon, none of Griffith and Whitcomb’s work on the Art Center was realized.

By the time the Art Center was approved and moving forward in 1939, the Dies

Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives was investigating the Federal Theatre for “un-American activities.” When President Roosevelt signed the federal budget in June of 1939 eliminating the Federal Theatre Project, time officially ran out on the Art Center in Portland. Though other WPA Federal One groups not eliminated in the 1939 federal budget were lined up to use the Art Center—such as the Grout School, Fine Arts,

Orchestra and Band—without the Oregon Unit, the Art Center plans came to a halt. Had the Portland Civic not removed themselves and the University of Oregon from the Art

Center deal one year earlier, approval and the building construction may have been well underway by the time the FTP was closed.

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The Grass Roots Theatre and the FTP

As Congress was deliberating the FTP’s fate, in June 1939, Whitcomb and her new Assistant Executive Director, Guy Williams, devised a plan that would keep theatre alive within the WPA in Oregon, with or without the FTP organization nationally.

Williams relieved Whitcomb from some of the demanding oversight of the Oregon Unit

beginning in January 1939, allowing her to administer the Art Center proposal for

Griffith. Williams was an experienced FTP leader, starting as an assistant executive

director of the Seattle Unit under Glenn Hughes, and finally serving as the Seattle Unit

director following Hughes’ departure for a short time before his transfer to the position of

administrator of FTP Western Regional Touring.51 Williams was experienced in touring

Seattle FTP units to CCC camps in Washington State and he was a presence in the FTP in

the Pacific Northwest.

Together they outlined and formalized an idea Whitcomb titled, “Grass Roots

Theatre” that would serve Oregonians across the state who she and Williams felt were

underserved by the FTP, but whom the FTP was originally intended to serve. In The

Grass-Roots Mind in America, Conal Furay writes, “the grass-roots mind is non-elite (by

self-definition) and […] it focuses on people, not on ideas.”52 Likewise, Whitcomb felt

the FTP, which started as a people-centered idea, had lost its way, and through the

creation of the Grass Roots Theatre, Whitcomb was re-inscribing the FTP’s community-

centered mission. She wrote, “it seemed to both of us that Federal Theatre has failed to

grasp one of its most important opportunities in omitting such activity.”53 The founding

document, Instructions for the Federal Theatre states, “the far reaching purpose is the establishment of theatres so vital to community life that they will continue to function

87

after the program of this Federal Project is completed.”54 By returning to the first article

in the FTP founding document, Whitcomb and Williams hoped to create theatre that was

vital to communities in Oregon and that would continue well after the FTP dissolved.

Whitcomb saw a need in Oregon to have theatre emerge from local communities

and her experience working with the Art Center proposal gave her reason to believe the

future of WPA theatre would serve rural Oregon through the existing web of Art Centers

around the state. The Grass Roots Theatre would be a “participating theatre for farm and

small town people under professional leadership.”55 Under Whitcomb’s Grass Roots

Theatre plan, WPA professionals through the FTP, or should the FTP close, under the

Federal Art Project, would take a unit set, lights and costumes to each of the Oregon

WPA Art Centers in Salem, Klamath Falls, Marshfield (Coos Bay), Gold Beach and

Hood River. The professionals would direct local townspeople in a legitimate drama

while teaching local community members the craft of theatre through classes offered at

the Art Center. In the proposal, Whitcomb explores the possibility of financing through

the Rockefeller Foundation which, “subsidizes in a few states what are known as ‘state

theatres,’ which in operation in each case consists of an acting company which is sent out

for production in high schools throughout the state.”56 With the idea, Whitcomb was

continuing the Oregon Unit’s function in the “State Theatre” plan through WPA Art

Center in Portland, but rather then serving only the city of Portland, WPA Art Centers

around Oregon would house theatrical plays, performed by local people, for local audiences.

Whitcomb sat down to propose the Grass Roots Theatre to Gladys Everett, state director of Women’s and Professional Projects, and Margery Hoffman Smith, the head of

88 the Federal Art Project, who offered Whitcomb a position as “State Director of Theatre

Activity in Art Centers” under the Federal Art Project. 57 Upon the closing of the FTP,

Griffith supported Whitcomb’s transfer to the Federal Art Project, stating she would have a job with the WPA as long as he was state administrator. Whitcomb assumed the position through June 1940, when pressure came from Congressmen to release former

FTP actors and administrators, like Whitcomb, who had transferred to the Federal Art

Project after the demise of the FTP. Whitcomb was exploring other opportunities, and was accepted into the Masters of Drama program at the University of Iowa, where she received her degree a year later.58 The Grass Roots Theatre represented a return to the roots of the FTP and the Oregon Unit, and the possibility of continuance of their mission to serve the people of the state of Oregon.

Through the Grass Roots Theatre, Whitcomb and Williams worked out a plan that would help preserve a portion of the FTP as an institution through the Federal Art

Project. The negotiation Whitcomb underwent to preserve the community-based theatre productions seen with the Oregon Unit, demonstrates the length she was willing to go to continue producing theatre that helped change the lives of Oregonians. Whitcomb’s commitment to the institution of the FTP was seen in her firm commitment in the wake of

HUAC’s communist allegations as she transformed the plays presented by the Oregon

Unit to help bathe the FTP in a patriotic, non-communist light. In the following chapter, through an analysis of the types of performances created over the course of the Unit, I draw a picture of Whitcomb’s negotiation to help the FTP survive. Like the Grass Roots

Theatre, the changes made to the Oregon Unit play selection, from the political left to the right, demonstrate the length to which Whitcomb would go to preserve her Unit.

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Notes

1 “Says Portland to Have Federal Theatre,” Portland News Telegram, November 8, 1937, 14.

2 MacColl, Growth, 325.

3 Ibid, 328.

4 February minutes, 26 February 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

5 Ibid.

6 Flanagan, Arena, 297.

7 Whitcomb to Mabie, 18 July 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

8 Whitcomb to Mabie, 22 March 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

9 March minutes, 24 March 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

10 Whitcomb, interview.

11 Executive committee minutes, 10 March 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

12 “Says Portland to Have Federal Theatre,” Portland News Telegram, November 8, 1937, 14.

13 “Borrowing Authorized,” Oregon Sunday Journal May 30, 1937, section 4, 2.

14 Whitcomb to Mabie, 29 May 1937, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

15 Annual Meeting - Reports, 24 March 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, Series B: Box 3, Folder 15, “Minutes 1936-”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

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16 Whitcomb to Mabie, 29 May 1937, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

17 Whitcomb to Mabie, 29 May 1937, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

18 Whitcomb to Mabie, 29 May 1937, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

19 Executive Committee May minutes, 24 May 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

20 Executive Committee May minutes, 24 May 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

21 Flanagan, Arena, 301.

22 de Rohan, First Summer Theater, 32.

23 Flanagan, Arena, 200, and de Rohan, First Summer Theater, 31.

24 de Rohan, First Summer Theater, 11.

25 Flanagan. Arena, 299.

26 Whitcomb to Mabie, 8 August 1937, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

27 May minutes, 16 May 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

28 Executive Committee September minutes, 8 September 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

29 Education Committee members, October 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

30 “New Director for Federal Group Work Here,” Oregon Daily Journal, November 13, 1937, 5.

31 Ibid.

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32 Flanagan, Arena, 299.

33 Ibid.

34 “New Director,” Oregon Daily Journal.

35 Executive Committee November minutes, 16 November 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

36 Executive Committee November minutes, 16 November 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

37 Executive Committee November minutes, 16 November 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

38 November Minutes, 26 November 1937, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

39 “Says Portland to Have Federal Theatre” Portland News Telegram, 1937, November 8, 14

40 “With Stage Folk,” Oregon Sunday Journal, November 21, 1937, section 4, 2.

41 Ibid.

42 “With Stage Folk,” Oregon Sunday Journal, April 10, 1938, section 4, 2, and April 17, 1938, section 4, 3.

43 “With Stage Folk,” Oregon Sunday Journal, November 21, 1937, section 4, 1.

44 Whitcomb to Mabie, 22 May 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

45 Telegram fromWhitcomb to Mabie, 25 May 1938, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

46 Witham, Federal Theatre, 53, 58-9.

47 Lawrence Langner and Armina Marshall, The Pursuit of Happiness, An American Comedy (New York: S. French, 1934) and Elmer Rice, “Councilor at Law,” Plays (London: Gollancz, 1933).

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48 May minutes, 20 May 1938, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

49 May minutes, 20 May 1938, Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, “PCT minutes”, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

50 “Portland Art Center – Long a Dream – Nears Reality,” The Oregonian, August 17, 1938, 1.

51 Witham, Federal Theatre, 88 and 106.

52 Conal Furay, The Grass-roots Mind in America: The American Sense of Absolutes (New York: New Viewpoints, 1977), 4.

53 Whitcomb to Mabie, 22 March 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

54 Flanagan, Instructions, 1.

55 Whitcomb to Mabie, 24 July 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

56 Whitcomb to Mabie, 24 June 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

57 Whitcomb to Mabie, 24 June 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

58 Whitcomb to Mabie, 12 March 1940, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

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CHAPTER IV

COOPERATIVE FARMING TO ANTI-UNION RHETORIC:

WHITCOMB’S LEFT TO RIGHT NEGOTIATION OF THE OREGON UNIT

A political assault on the New Deal in 1938 by conservative Democrats and

Republicans occurred in the halls of Congress, with the FTP set up as a political New

Deal punching bag. Congressional allegations of communists in the rank-and-file of the

FTP and the WPA made national news, and were in turn reiterated in Portland newspapers. The conservative elements that spurred this attack nationally were present for years in the state of Oregon, with many prominent Oregon politicians, Democrats and

Republicans, denouncing the WPA and work relief even as hundreds of thousands of

Oregonians began working for New Deal agencies. The Oregon Unit vaudeville productions early in the Unit’s history were strictly entertainment, but as FTP administration charged Whitcomb to train the vaudeville actors to present scripted plays approved by the FTP Play Selection board, she had to negotiate between left of center plays supporting the New Deal and conservative state politics.

The move from left of center New Deal plays to more conservative or apolitical

material can be charted by examining the plays produced by the Oregon Unit at a single

event over the course of several years. The political content, or lack thereof, in the plays

offered over three consecutive years at the Flax Festival in the town of Mt. Angel,

Oregon, will demonstrate how Whitcomb negotiated the Oregon Unit through turbulent

political waters. Placing the Oregon Unit’s most liberal and conservative plays into context of state and federal political attitudes towards the New Deal will demonstrate

94

Whitcomb’s prowess as an administrator, and how vital she was to the Oregon WPA.

The first years of the Oregon Unit were free from Federal Administrative scrutiny

and oversight, with Oregon WPA Director Griffith leaving Whitcomb to promote the

Oregon Unit as she saw fit. Before the administration of the FTP began inserting itself

into the operations of the Oregon Unit following the 1937 FTP Summer Conference, the

troupe produced plays, which supported what conservative Democrats and Republicans

in the 1930s would have considered liberal or socialist propaganda. Plays like The Yellow

Harvest and Power were about the workers confronting large business interests—real

David versus Goliath stories—with the ultimate victors winning through collective

action. While Whitcomb was acting without oversight her play selection leaned distinctly

to the political left.

By 1938, Whitcomb received administrative help, and her desire to quit the

Oregon Unit subsided. At the same time, the increased pressure from various levels of

FTP administration and government forced her to make difficult programming choices.

Political demands at the federal level, coming in the form of investigations into

communist sympathies within the FTP by Congress, required the Oregon Unit to change

their left-leaning play selection. At the same time, while Whitcomb was meeting with the

Portland Civic to secure the Art Center, she was also trying to meet new expectations of

the FTP administration in Washington to produce Children’s Theatre and Living

Newspaper plays. As administrative programming pressures increased, especially after the FTP Summer Conference attended by Whitcomb in 1937, so did attention on the

model Oregon Unit. Flanagan herself, seeing promise in the Unit’s activities, visited

Oregon several times. The official visits pushed Whitcomb to choose plays approved by

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the FTP Play Selection Board rather than plays which originated from the troupe of actors

or from local playwrights. The conformity to New Deal politics, while supportive of the

WPA, did not align with conservative anti-New Deal Oregon state politics.

At the state level, Griffith expected the use of the Oregon Unit at state functions,

such as the Flax Festival, where the WPA was celebrated for their contribution to destitute farmers in the Willamette Valley, and Sloping West, which highlighted WPA contributions in Oregon for the Portland public. Griffith used the Oregon Unit as a propaganda tool, to attract attention and put an entertaining face on large public works projects. Oregon conservative anti-New Deal Democrat and Republican politicians saw

New Deal relief efforts as a handout from Washington, D.C., that weakened the vitality

of the state. Whitcomb had to please the FTP by programming plays approved by the

national FTP Play Selection Board, while at the same time not alienating local politicians when the Oregon Unit needed political support to create the WPA Art Center.

Whitcomb’s negotiation of the political and administrative waters was made more complicated in 1938 when the FTP, and Flanagan personally, came under investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). Often called the Dies Committee in the press after committee chair Texas Representative Martin Dies,

HUAC investigated disloyal and subversive activity in the federal government, specifically looking for communists who distributed propaganda while working for the government. One of the committee’s first orders of business was the investigation of the

FTP as a voice of communist and socialist propaganda and dissent. Although the HUAC hearings brought only former New York Unit employees to the stand, Whitcomb changed the type of plays presented by the Oregon Unit to create a more politically savvy

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organization representing American ideals in an Oregonian context.

Two festivals featuring the Oregon Unit demonstrate Whitcomb’s negotiation

from left-leaning productions that supported WPA projects to right-leaning productions that were patriotically anti-union. The Flax Festival performances by the Oregon Unit in the town of Mt. Angel, Oregon, for example, changed from a battle to save a farmers’ cooperative to a patriotic retelling of the history of flax in the Willamette Valley. The most politically dramatic change in programming for Whitcomb comes in the Paul

Bunyan Festival in 1939. The Paul Bunyan “American Festival” planned for an amphitheatre at the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood centered on the anti-union play

Paul Bunyan by E.P. Conkle. The two festivals promoting Oregon’s farms and forests stressed home-grown Americana, with the Flax Festival presenting the struggles of the

Willamette Valley farmer and the Paul Bunyan Festival centering on the struggles of the

Oregonian lumberjack. Whitcomb’s play choices changed as the politics of the situation changed in the anti-communist political climate.

This chapter will follow the trajectory of the Oregon Unit through the

performances at the annual celebration of the Flax Festival and Whitcomb’s negotiation

between state and federal politics of politically charged FTP-approved plays. The Oregon

Unit transformation was significant, from promoting government-owned utilities and

cooperative farming practices to one featuring logger heroes who denounced unions.

Oregon was a hotbed of union labor and socialist sympathy, but the later festival

productions in 1938-39 glorified non-union labor. The anti-union sentiment in Paul

Bunyan was striking considering the strength of the American Federation of Labor (AFL)

in the mills and logging camps of Oregon. The change by the Oregon Unit following the

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ruling by HUAC to clean up the FTP, demonstrating a need by Whitcomb in 1938 to

support a patriotic, all-American, anti-communist, anti-socialist model unit.

The Yellow Harvest: Cooperative Propaganda

The first Flax Festival in 1936 was a celebration of WPA efforts to support farmers in Oregon through a cooperative, which the Oregon Unit featured in the socialist melodrama The Yellow Harvest.1 A cataclysmic drought hit the Willamette Valley in the

summer of 1935, at the peak of the Midwestern Dust Bowl. Crop yields and the quality of

farm goods plummeted in Oregon, leaving many farmers without the means to buy seed,

repair equipment or pay taxes on their property. In Oregon, the WPA went to work on

several projects to help the unemployed workers and the Willamette Valley farmers,

beginning with WPA-constructed flax processing facilities. The processing facilities

brought a new crop to market for Willamette Valley farmers, who in turn supplied high

quality flax fiber for the production of linen and flaxseed for the production of linseed oil.

To celebrate the WPA contribution and the new flax industry, the town of Mount Angel

established a Flax Harvest Festival over the first weekend in September 1936.* Griffith,

who pushed the processing facilities into being, brought the Oregon Unit to the harvest

festival to entertain state dignitaries and local farmers. Griffith often asked Whitcomb to feature the Oregon Unit at events to increase the exposure of the WPA. The performance of The Yellow Harvest, supporting the WPA flax facilities in the Willamette Valley was very similar to performances requested by Griffith of Sloping West in the Portland

Market, highlighting the work of the WPA in Oregon through performances and displays

in 1937. On a stage in Saint Mary’s Church Auditorium, the Oregon Unit performed their

* The Flax Harvest Festival is the root of Mount Angel’s Oktoberfest today 98

signature vaudeville acts and the play The Yellow Harvest, which chronicled the story of

a Willamette Valley farmer struggling to save a farmers’ cooperative that processes flax

fiber into linen.†

The process and production of flax was on display during the Festival in the town

of Mount Angel, educating the public on the production of flax into linen through the

celebration. The 1936 Flax Festival performance of The Yellow Harvest was part of a

long line of entertainment, including a parade with floats draped in flax, a semi-

professional baseball game, a concert featuring “a chorus of 100 male voices” and the

Oregon WPA band on a stage outside the Mount Angel schoolhouse.2 The Oregon Unit

vaudevillians put together a performance for the original festival program titled

FLAXIANA, “written especially around the Mt. Angel flax industry,” ‡ which pulled vaudeville material from their 1936 shtick together with a one-act play, The Yellow

Harvest, written by Frederick Schlick, performed in the St. Mary’s Catholic Church auditorium.3

The Yellow Harvest is a melodrama soaked with a moral message that the

members of HUAC would likely have considered socialist. The play follows similar

themes to those in Schlick’s 1932 Broadway flop, Bloodstream§, about African American

prisoners and white guards trapped in a prison mine collapse where racial injustice and

death are great equalizers.4 Schlick continued his morality message with The Yellow

† Theatre historian Elizabeth Osborne found The Yellow Harvest buried in the CCC archive in the Library of Congress and supplies an analysis in her chapter “Fading Frontiers” about the Oregon Unit.

‡ The Mt. Angel News noted that Harry Summerkamp, “Stage Director”, traveled to the town to view the performance facility, calling the performance a “pageant” and “one-act play” a week before the Flax Festival performance. (Mount Angel News, “Flax Festival Schedule”, 8/13/1936, 3, and Mount Angel News. “Many Events to Boost Flax” 8/27/36, 5.)

§ Though the set was designed by noted designer Jo Mielziner, nothing could not save Bloodstream, which ran for just 29 performances. 99

Harvest, setting the power of despotic property owners against a farmer trying to keep a

fragile cooperative from collapsing. The power of God intervenes in both plays, with God

manifesting himself as an African American prisoner in Bloodstream and operating

through a priest and as deus ex machina in The Yellow Harvest. Schlick’s plays explore

the disparity between race and class and in a melodramatic fashion championing the

common man, the overthrowing of the rich and equality among classes.

The plot of The Yellow Harvest centered “on the flax possibilities with the Mt.

Angel community as the setting of the play.”5 The play’s central character, Lee Halmis, a

Flax farmer and leader of a Willamette Valley cooperative flax association, is committed

to the crop’s success. Business speculators James Kells and his wife, Alice, purchase the

loan to Lee’s farm and intend to do what they can to acquire the land and destroy the flax

industry in Oregon. James Kells sees no value in flax or the flax cooperative, which he

believes will drive down the profits Lee could gain per acre with a different crop.

Determined to obtain the farm at any cost, James and Alice Kells set out to destroy Lee’s

ability to pay the loan by destroying the cooperative and his crop.6

The Oregon Unit’s production re-envisioned the history of flax in the Willamette

Valley to include the WPA. In Schlick’s script, Lee’s cooperative was made possible by flax processing facilities supplied by the WPA, paralleling real-life circumstances. In

1935, with a parish full of struggling Mount Angel farmers, Benedictine Father Alcuin

Heibel visited Washington, D.C., as the WPA was taking shape.7 Griffith heard Heibel’s

request and placed flax production in the Willamette Valley as a top priority for the

Oregon WPA.

When the Oregon Unit presented The Yellow Harvest to the farmers in St. Mary’s

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Church, they were making heroes of those farmers who continued to harvest flax through

tough economic times. The character Lee represented those farmers who banded together as a community to bring the crop to market. The story of farmers working flax in the

Willamette Valley was one of crop rotation and cooperation. Before the invention of a flax-pulling machine, the crop was pulled by hand, and the production of the crop was limited by the cooperative man-hours available between neighboring farmers.** Flax was

a minor crop on diversified farms across the Willamette Valley, evidenced by a 1934

survey taken by the Oregon Experiment Station finding an average of nine acres out of

78-acre farm planted with flax. Bartering for needed supplies substantially fed the rural

family farm, and like many farmers around Mt. Angel, Lee Halmis was a subsistence

farmer, living crop-to-crop and unable to get ahead.8 Lee remembers the struggle to

legitimize the flax industry in a story he tells his farmhand, Belden, as he looks out over a

flowering field of flax:

Remember in the old days when they tried to make us believe that we couldn’t grow flax here? Grow it here!—Why, Belden, old socks, a sight like that is the answer to a flaxgrower’s dream!... Now if we can only keep harmony in the cooperation, we’ll be on top of the world.9

Before the age of mechanized harvest, harvesting flax was incredibly labor intensive, and

therefore, not economically viable as a cash crop. After farmers pulled the plants from the

ground, they brought their crops together for families to process and extract the fiber that

would be made into linen. Flax brought the Willamette Valley farming communities

together, but because of the labor intensity, the crop did not represent a large portion of

the farm’s income. In order to make flax a cash crop the entire operation needed to be

mechanized—from the planting, to harvesting, to processing—with facilities provided

** The flax pulling machine was invented in Ontario, Canada in 1924. 101 through WPA assistance.

Flax was dwindling as a crop in the Willamette Valley before the WPA processing facilities opened in 1936. Before the WPA entered the flax industry, Lee

Halmis would have brought his flax to the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem for processing. The penitentiary was the primary flax processer in the Willamette Valley through the 1920s, but lost much of its production when a 1934 federal law permitted states to prohibit the sale of products created by penitentiaries.10 Before the age of synthetic materials, linen made from flax was an important fabric, and penal labor processing flax kept the price of linen cost effective. The WPA facilities and the farmers’ cooperative, championed by Halmis in the play, were the only ways to keep high quality

Oregon flax on the market.

Within the auditorium of St. Mary’s Church, the vaudevillian and farmer— prosperous from the turn of the century to the 1920s, but both suffering for different reasons within the economic collapse of the Great Depression—found sanctuary through

WPA assistance. Schlick’s play presented a welcoming message to farmers in the audience who rotated their fields to flax. The play shows how the advent of the cooperative in 1936 allowed farmers to once again bring flax to market and realize financial security. At the beginning of The Yellow Harvest, Lee says:

We’ve spent five years building [the cooperative] up.—We donated sites for the plants, and the Government built them! Why? Because we believe, and the Government believes in flax! 11

Florida State University professor and FTP historian Elizabeth Osborne writes that Lee’s impassioned speech “unites the struggling flax farmer with the government” serving “as a visible bridge between the Oregon flax growers and the WPA.”12 The intended audience

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for the play’s propaganda supporting the farmers’ cooperative were Mount Angel farmers

who needed to support the cooperative by committing to the planting and harvesting of

flax. If flax was not harvested for processing or if farmers tried to undercut one another

by selling flax on the open market, the cooperative would not survive. Economic

socialism can be defined in many ways, but the overriding implication of the play was that the growing and harvesting, of flax and the distribution of linen are collectively owned by the community. The farmers watching the vaudevillians in the play at St.

Mary’s Church needed to “believe” in the promise of prosperity for the cooperative to succeed.

In the dramatic conclusion of The Yellow Harvest, James and Alice Kells call in the note that they own on Lee’s farm, and while he is away from the farm to find someone to carry his debt until harvest, they attempt to force him into bankruptcy by setting fire to his barn. Farmers feared such fires, a fear that kept many farmers away from growing and storing flax. The fire highlighted the benefits of the cooperative, which stored the farmers’ flax and assumed the insurance liability should the flax burn.†† In The

Yellow Harvest, Lee’s farmhand saves the crop by chopping down the farm’s water

tower, dousing the fire.

In the final scene of the play, upon his return to the farm, Lee has extraordinary

news. In his search for an answer to his financial crisis, he ascended Mt. Angel where the

Benedictine monetary stands today.

Lee: I asked the Lord on my bended knee to save the flax farmers! (He crosses himself, looks up, continues quietly and simply) And then I [w]ent out and sat in the garden, and looked at the flowers.

†† In 1940, the WPA flax processing facility in Springfield, Oregon burned to the ground in a very similar fire. (Eugene Register-Guard. “Springfield Flax Firm Fire Takes $5600 Toll”. 11/21/40, (144) Eugene, Or: Guard Print. Co. , 1) 103

Kells: (ironically) What did the Lord do? Lee: (With antagonism) Father Benedict came out, and sat down. We looked out across the valley, and I told him my troubles. […] He put through a long- distance call to Salem, and talked to the Governor!.... And tomorrow I‘m goin’ to get a loan!13

In the production, the character of Lee fell on bended knee in the St. Mary’s Auditorium,

at the base of Mt. Angel, uniting the power of the Catholic Church with the answer to

Father Heibel’s prayer to help his flock. As Osborne notes, Governor Charles H. Martin

was also in attendance at the event, taking credit as the real-life hero of a “federally-

funded miracle.”14 The fact that the play glorified Martin, an anti-New Deal Democrat, as

the savior of flax may have helped curb his distaste for the play, but the play was never

produced at another Flax Festival again.

The Yellow Harvest was a melodrama draped in a socialist message of cooperative

farming and may have leaned too far to the political left for the tastes of politicians,

administrators and the rural farming community in Mount Angel. The WPA created a

cooperative, but presenting a cooperative as savior on stage, financially supported by

politicians and morally saved by the church, was pushing the liberal envelope. What the

WPA needed for Flax Festival entertainment was a play that wove the WPA into the

dramatic history of flax in the Willamette Valley, while de-emphasizing their socialist cooperative.

Tapestry in Linen: Changing from Propaganda to WPA History

By 1937, Whitcomb knew the Flax Festival would be an annual event and decided to change the play presented from The Yellow Harvest to an authentic Living Newspaper,

Tapestry in Linen, written by WPA employee Shotwell Calvert. Calvert does not appear

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as a playwright in other Oregon Unit productions, but the historic Oregon narrative of

Tapestry in Linen, follows the writings in the Oregon guidebook, Oregon End of the

Trail, suggesting that he was on loan from the Oregon Federal Writers Project, another

division of WPA’s Federal One.15 Why Whitcomb decided to change the play for the

Flax Festival is unclear. Politicians or administrators who watched the play in 1936, like

Govenor Martin or Griffith, may have not cared for the socialist connotations of the WPA

project in the play, the general audience reaction may have been unfavorable, or

Whitcomb’s Living Newspaper training at the FTP Summer Conference at Vassar

College weeks before the performance may have spurred the change. In a handwritten

letter to E.C. Mabie dated the day of the 1937 Flax Festival performance, Whitcomb

seems frustrated and excited with the amount of time given to write and produce the

script. She wrote:

Monday night Shotwell and I sat down and re-wrote several scenes. Then I rolled up my sleeves and waded in. I made no attempt to be at my desk nor did I even glance at our future beyond today. I have done what I could to get all items of production set in pantomime, so to speak. But we are unable to have even a dress rehearsal. I shall just hold my breath, trust in God and the teamwork of a company who are entirely used to each other.16

Whitcomb’s drive to fix the scenes and polish the production without a final dress rehearsal, was a testament to her belief in Flanagan’s message at Vassar College about the power of the Living Newspaper to change lives. In Flanagan’s closing speech of the

FTP Summer Camp, Whitcomb heard her say, “In a stroke of fortune unprecedented in dramatic history, we have been given a chance to help change America at a time when twenty million unemployed Americans proved it needed changing.”17 Whitcomb brought

this determination back to Oregon with fervor that forced Tapestry in Linen into

existence.

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The frantic nature of her penmanship and wording in the letter suggests

Whitcomb was under a tight schedule with little time to write. Why would she place extra

burden on herself and the troupe and have Calvert write a Living Newspaper based on the

history of flax? We know Griffith and conservative democrats, such as Governor Martin,

attended the first Flax Festival. If the choice to change the play came from one of the

dignitaries who did not care for The Yellow Harvest’s melodramatic socialist-leaning

message, the Oregon Unit’s mad dash to place a new play before the Mt. Angel audience

may have been a the result of political intervention, or at least trepidation that such

intervention might come. Perhaps Whitcomb was changing the play and rehearsing at the

last minute in an attempt to negotiate the complex political landscape of the WPA relief

efforts in the Willamette Valley.

Unlike The Yellow Harvest, the text of Tapestry In Linen is not extant, but was

described by The Mt. Angel News as a “rapid fire musical drama dealing with the history

and development of the flax industry in Oregon,” incorporating “dancing, juggling

acrobatics and specialty numbers” to tell the story of flax in the Willamette Valley.18 The

play combined “the techniques of radio, theater and ballet” and was moved from the

auditorium at St. Mary’s Church to an outdoor stage in Ebner Ballpark. The cast had

closed Taming of the Shrew in Laurelhurst Park in Portland one week prior to the Ebner

Ballpark performance and so was used to performing outdoors.‡‡ Although the script has

not been discovered, the outdoor presentation, use of music, dance and juggling outdoors

‡‡ July and August, 1937, were filled with outdoor pageants and performance in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. On July 22-24, 1937, the Oregon Trail Pageant took place in Eugene. Coupled with the performance of Tapestry in Linen by the Oregon Unit, Oregonians were treated to outdoor free entertainment that celebrated Oregon’s history. The Oregon Unit was using a portable stage owned by Portland Parks and Recreation Department for Shrew, and this stage may have been transported to Ebner Ballpark for the performance. 106

on a stage in a baseball field combined the skills the Oregon Unit gained working in

Portland area parks set to an Oregon historical narrative found in WPA Oregon guide

books.

The play transformed into a historic retelling of flax and how the WPA was

wrapped in the history. Whitcomb describes the historic context of Tapestry in Linen,

Some very interesting dances are in the show and the script really does give an interesting resume of the history of flax in Oregon and an exciting challenge as to what is to be done about it without the least taint of the stench of pageantry.19

Tapestry in Linen included several “dances” choreographed at the FTP Summer

Conference including the unveiling of Whitcomb’s Dance of the Flax Scutching

Machine, a modern dance that demonstrated the processing of flax fiber into linen through the bodies of the actors in the Oregon Unit.20 Following retting, where the flax is

soaked in fresh water, the flax plant must dry in the field before the woody stem and flax

fiber can be separated from one another through a process called “scutching.” The

scutching machine breaks up the woody outside layer of the flax plant to expose the long

flax fibers. The invention of the scutching machine allowed a single worker to separate

flax fiber more easily, allowing far more flax per hour. The mechanical and modern

dance movements by acrobats and tumblers, comedians and clowns embodied the

scutching machine, and such choreography must have seemed very modern and edgy to

the rural crowd at the Flax Festival.

The play was not a pageant, but rather the embodiment of the physical and

historical narrative of flax in the Willamette Valley.21 Outside of the scutching machine

dances, Journal theatre critic Harold Hunt described the historic facts and figures of the

history of flax:

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…we discovered we knew virtually nothing of the dramatic battle that has been going on more than half a century to put Oregon in its proper place as the producing center of the world’s finest flax. And we found that facts and figures, usually dry and unpalatable reading, had life when brought into the interesting panoramic history of the industry.22

Hunt’s Journal feature about Tapestry in Linen praised the Living Newspaper form as the

most important invention of the Federal Theatre:§§

…with crude stage accommodations and effects, we saw and heard “Tapestry in Linen” presentation, […] and we came away with a feeling we had witnessed something which, given opportunity, might become a potent factor in community and educational affairs.23

In the play, Madge Wynne, who had starred as Katherina in a performance of Taming of

the Shrew days earlier in Portland parks, played the character of Juliet Montague Lord

(1844-1924), wife of Oregon State governor William F. Lord (served 1885-89), who championed the Oregon flax industry and supported its introduction at the Paris

Exposition in 1900. The other Oregon Unit actors portrayed World’s Fair judges, farmers, and “various people who, in one way and another were affected” by increasing the production of flax in Oregon.24 By presenting dramatic stories pulled from newspaper and history of Oregonians who saw the possibility of flax and encouraged its production,

Whitcomb and Calvert created the first Living Newspaper about Oregon.

The Oregon Unit centered Tapestry in Linen on historic campaigns in Oregon to

support the flax industry, like that of Elizabeth Lord while linking the WPA facilities to

the history of flax production. The last Flax Festival performance by the Oregon Unit in

1938 was titled “Flaxtown Frolics,” featuring 14-acts of vaudeville in the St. Mary

auditorium. The change in the performance content over three years of the Flax Festival

demonstrates a move from the political left to apolitical entertainment simply retelling the

§§ Hunt witnessed the rehearsal on August 11, 1937, just prior to the Flax Festival performance. 108

history of flax the Willamette Valley. Whitcomb’s political negotiation—from Schlick’s

socialist Harvest to Calvert’s Tapestry to the troupe’s straight vaudeville—demonstrates the lengths she would go, and put her troupe through, to achieve the performance that would please those in charge.

By August 1938, when the Oregon Unit presented “Flaxtown Frolics,” HUAC was hearing testimony against the FTP. Five months earlier, Whitcomb was willing to brave the political waters and present the Living Newspaper Power, which pulled well past The Yellow Harvest socialist propaganda by advocating for people to rise up and vote for public distribution of hydro-electric power. The next example of Power was propaganda for the FDR administration, and the Oregon Unit production set itself in the middle of the dispute about who should profit from the electricity generated by the newly completed Bonneville Dam.

Power: Socialist Propaganda for the Bonneville Dam

Whitcomb took a risk in presenting a popular Living Newspaper production seen as overtly socialist supporting municipal utilities. By presenting the play Power in

March 1938, the Oregon Unit stepped into the middle of a debate that was ripping apart the Democratic Party in Oregon and Washington, D.C. Like The Yellow Harvest, the play

Power pushed against the political mainstream in Oregon with its accusations of businessmen who make a profit by cheating the public. Rather than following a heroic character battling an evil businessman as in The Yellow Harvest, Power created scenes and characters pulled from newspaper headlines. Common people, such as a Farmer and his Wife, a Grocer, and a Barber, were presented in context with Senators and Supreme

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Court Justices making the case for public power utilities against the greed of privately-

held power companies. Many conservatives in the Oregon and National Democratic Party

saw the debate over municipal power distribution as a move towards socialization of

private industry. MacColl writes:

More than any other issue, strong differences of opinion over public power prevented the Democratic Party from creating the type of coalition that would have allowed it to challenge effectively the Republican Party’s traditional dominance of the state legislature.25

The play Power sits at the center of the argument, and was propaganda for the public

distribution of electricity. Powerful politicians in Oregon backed by private power

companies pushed for the privatization of Bonneville’s electricity distribution to large

industrial plants powered by the Bonneville Dam rather than supplying power to the rural

areas of Oregon. Private power lobbyists worked against rural electrification, which was

a primary concern of the FDR administration, and actively opposed municipal power in

Oregon by financing campaigns for anti-New Deal Democrats.26 The Oregon Unit

engaged both debates in Power, which featured the topic of rural electrification.

The completion of the Bonneville Dam and the ensuing debate over the distribution of

power in the halls of the State Legislature, the Portland City Council and Mayor’s office,

and the Governor’s office, was set against FDR’s commitment to the formation of the

Pacific Northwest Regional Planning Commission which championed the creation of the

Columbia Valley Authority (CVA), patterned after the Tennessee Valley Authority

(TVA).27

Power supported the FDR administration’s call for the public distribution of power with the construction and regional planning of the TVA. As Barry Witham writes,

…the play was a response to the alarms raised in the private sector over the whole

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WPA agenda: that the government meddling would lead to inefficiency, undermine the free enterprise system, and ultimately create a nationalized network of public utilities and industry.28

Power was written as a response to several cases heard by the Supreme Court against the

TVA, and highlights the case brought by the Tennessee Electric Power Company

(TEPCO), arguing against the TVA’s constitutional right to sell cheap power, undercutting the market rate to create what TEPCO argued was unfair competition.29

FDR’s position, supported in the play, was that affordable power was in the interest of the people of the Tennessee Valley. With injunctions looming against the TVA, the president pushed for the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1937 in Congress, which required a three-judge panel to rule on injunction cases like TEPCO, with two of three judges needed to place an injunction on government branches like the TVA.30 FDR’s passage of the Judiciary Act was viewed by many in the Democratic Party as a move towards the socialization of private industry, and the controversy split the Democratic majority in the legislature in Washington, D.C. By producing the play Power, with the legislature in Oregon split on the issue of public power, and many in Congress feeling the

President had overstepped his authority by moving the country towards socialism,

Whitcomb was creating propaganda for the New Deal agenda.

The political and money interests that controlled electricity distribution in

Portland did not approve of FDR’s plan to create a regional power authority around the dams on the Columbia River. As a voice for the New Deal, the Oregon Unit would step into the political quagmire with their production of Power. In 1935, as the Bonneville

Dam was taking shape, Portland’s city council and mayor took up the debate around creating a public utility in the city of Portland through the purchase of the Northwestern

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Electric Company. The City Council was inactive on the idea until the Commissioner of

Public Utilities, Ralph C. Clyde, presented a formal proposal to the City Council in

December 1936 stating:

If the people of Portland are to benefit directly from [the Bonneville Dam and the Bonneville Power Authority] then it is absolutely necessary that a publicly-owned distribution system be provided. 31

Clyde argued that private utility rates were always going to be higher than public rates

because privately-held power companies paid dividends on bonds and to their stockholders, passing all expenses onto the ratepayer. A municipally-owned venture

would not have such expenses. By producing Power, Whitcomb took sides in city

politics. Power dramatically portrays how private utilities pass expenses onto the customer to manipulate their rate base. A meeting with a board of directors in scene six is

an example of how Power portrays private utility businessmen, and argues Clyde’s point

made to the Portland City Council:

Chairman: Gentlemen, our properties have been appraised at four million dollars. First Director (chuckling): Well, we haven’t depreciated much. Chairman: Do you realize this may mean a rate cut? (The Directors look disturbed.) Now I have a proposal… We must hire another firm of appraisers. Second Director: And pay another half-million-dollar fee? Chairman: Certainly—and more if we have to! Are you forgetting, gentlemen, that our rates are based on what we spend, on our capital account? (He raps his knuckles on the table. A pause.) Third Director: (who has been thinking, his chin in his hand): Say, what about those old trucks we’ve got piled up at Plant 16? Fourth Director: They won’t run anymore! Chairman (suavely): Gentlemen, they have all been included in the rate base— at the price we paid for them. Third Director: It seems to me we ought to have some more old junk lying around some place… (Blackout)

By presenting Power, the Oregon Unit was educating the voting public about the often- underhanded calculation of their electricity rates by private power companies. Clyde’s

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argument for municipal power was not popular with Portland’s Mayor Joseph K. Carson,

who openly rejected the proposal. Carson, like many Oregon state politicians – most notably Governor Martin – financed his campaign with the help of private power lobbyists like former Oregon Governor Oswald West, who represented the privately-held

Pacific Power & Light Company. Rather than voting up or down on Clyde’s measure to purchase the Northwestern Electric Company, Carson convinced the council to transfer

the decision to the voting public. At a time of high unemployment and economic

uncertainty, the public was asked to vote for a tax levy of $50,000 for the appraisal of the

Northwestern Electric Company properties in a special election. If the voters approved

the tax levy then another special election to vote on municipal power would be

scheduled. In January 1936, the tax levy was soundly defeated, the city of Portland

renewed the Northwestern Electric Company contract as the Bonneville Dam began

producing electricity in 1937, and Portlanders never had the opportunity to vote for

municipal power.32 By producing Power a few months after the renewal of the

Northwestern Electric contract, Whitcomb was placing the Oregon Unit firmly against

the manipulative vote rejecting the public power option, and advocated for politicians to give Portlanders the chance to vote for public power.

Playwright Arthur Arent’s work in Power is often radical, calling for audience

members to take action with a scene structure pulled from propaganda plays like Waiting

for Lefty by playwright Clifford Odets. An example of this kind of work is found in

Scene 15-A, between a farmer and his wife, Nora, reading by the light of a kerosene

lamp. In the scene, the farmer’s wife demands that her husband do more than turn up the

kerosene wick,

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Farmer: What you want me to do, Nora? The wick’s up as high as it’ll go. Wife: Never mind the wick! How about a couple of nice little electric lights around here? Farmer: Now, we been all over that before. And there ain’t nothin’ I can do about it. Wife: Ain’t there? Farmer: You heard what Joe Frank said. His farm’s bigger’n mine. He can use more lights, and the company told him, nothin’ doin’. Wife: So, you and Joe are getting’ up a little club to read in the daytime, eh? (She rises) Suppose they told you couldn’t have any air, would you stop breathin’?33

Power not only equates the rural condition to the lack of electrification, but because of a lack of assistance, rural populations suffer from “poor land, limited diet, insufficient schooling, inadequate medical care, no plumbing, industry, agriculture or electrification!”34 The farmer in the argument is powerless to get the power company to run a power line to his farm, but Arent calls on his audience to take action by banding together in solidarity against the electric companies.

There is a difference in the socialist implications between the power of the individual farmer in The Yellow Harvest and the power of collective action in Power. In

Power rural farmers band together, taking control of their situation, whereas in The

Yellow Harvest, an individual farmer forms a cooperative and as business interests move in to take his land he sets out to find a solution by himself, ultimately discovering salvation in the Catholic Church and the Governor – a deus ex machina. At the beginning of the scene, the farmer in Power is helpless in his situation with the power company and his wife demands he take action: to get up, get out and make his voice heard.

Farmer: Nora, if they don’t want to string lights out to my farm I can’t make ‘em. (Farmer rises.) Wife: Who said you can’t? Who says you can’t go up there and raise holy blazes until they give ‘em to you! Tell ‘em you’re an American citizen! Tell ‘em you’re sick and tired of lookin’ at fans and heaters and vacuums and dish-washin’ machines in catalogues, that you’d like to use ‘em for a change! Tell ‘em… (she stops)… What the hell do you think Andy Jackson you’re always talkin’ about

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would do in a case like this! (As he stands, convinced, she claps his hat on his head, and gives him a push) Now go on out and tell ‘em somethin’! (Farmer exits.)35

The farmer and his wife in Power echo Joe and Edna in a scene from Waiting for Lefty in which the call to action by the Group Theatre brought the audience into the streets in

1935, chanting “Strike! Strike!” at the end of the first performance. Arent was capturing

the same leftist emotional message in Power, seeking to give voice to the powerless so

they would rise up together. 36 Schlick’s farmer seeks salvation for his troubles from

banks, ultimately receiving a magical loan from the state, whereas Arent engages the

farmer’s wife in the struggle, demanding farmer solidarity to rise up and demand action

from the corporate giant. The solidarity of action in Power make it a far more socialist play than that of The Yellow Harvest.

The Oregon Unit only performed Power twice on the last weekend in March

1938, when the standard run of an Oregon Unit production, including Living Newspapers

such as One-Third of a Nation, was at least two weeks. The political pressure against the

play came from local politics and not from HUAC, which formed two months after the

March production of Power. As MacColl writes, for the Oregon politicians, “the thought

of a government corporation assuming control over the marketing of federally-generated power was nothing short of socialism.”37 As a solution to the “vaudeville problem” at the

FTP Summer Conference in 1937, Whitcomb needed to apply her vaudevillians to a

Living Newspaper play. Power had nationwide popularity and the topic, so near the

completion of the Bonneville Dam, made it a natural choice for the first Oregon Unit

Living Newspaper production. Whitcomb walked the line between the FTP’s

administrators and local politicians: pleasing FTP administration by selecting the popular

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play for production while keeping the run short and limiting pre-publicity so as not to anger Oregon politicians and those opposed to public power.*** While production

notebooks (featuring reports, photos and reviews) were a common way for state Units to

inform FTP administration in Washington about their activity, one of the only Oregon

Unit production notebooks in the National Archive is for Power. Whitcomb financially

justifies the limited run in the production notebook,

“Power” was produced before the project was in its own theatre and the complications of light cues, scene changes and doubling of roles were all intensified by the fact that the project was paying rental for every rehearsal in the auditorium where it was produced; therefore, the company was under the constant strain of working against time. 38

The large Benson Polytechnic School auditorium on Portland’s East Side, where the Unit

produced the costume drama The Pursuit of Happiness in February 1938, had more performances than Power, with period costumes, and extensive pre-publicity. The answer to why the run was short lies in Whitcomb realizing Power’s socialist sentiment about the hot-button issue would anger some politicians and the public who voted against public power.

Nevertheless, reviews for Power were favorable, and featured prominently in the Oregon Unit production notebook. In his review of the play, Harold Hunt suggested:

Naturally there will be many who do not agree with the stand the author, Arthur Arent, has taken. They will find in the production propaganda. But they will find, too, mass of information, from newspapers and records, dealing with a subject that is, at the moment, one of the biggest in interest of any in the Pacific Northwest, the subject of distribution of power produced at Bonneville….39

Power used propaganda to raise awareness of public power for an audience who,

according to the press, did not like the idea. While the politics were dicey, Whitcomb was

*** While Oregon Unit production announcements were often weeks in advance, he first announcement for Power came the Monday before opening. (News Telegram. “New Techniques used in ‘Power’ by Federal Theatre”. 3/21/1938,6) 116

able to demonstrate how the Oregon Unit was utilizing her retrained vaudeville talent

while producing topical FTP Living Newspaper productions in the shadow of the

Bonneville Dam. At the same time, she received favorable reviews while avoiding controversy that may have grown against the Oregon Unit if the play had an extended run.

Over the next year Whitcomb changed the play selection of the Oregon Unit to not only respond to the politics in Oregon but to the local impression of the FTP at a national level. As the severity of the HUAC investigation hit FTP administration, the play selection by all units had to move away from left-leaning productions like Power to mainstream apolitical or even anti-socialist content. Because they were a small troupe working in Oregon political waters, it was far easier for the Oregon Unit and Whitcomb to adapt to a more conservative paradigm than other, larger FTP Units.

Whitcomb’s negotiation with Oregon politics around the Oregon Unit production of Power was brought into the national spotlight as Flanagan was called in for questioning by HUAC a few months later. HUAC used Power’s call to action as damning evidence of the FTP’s socialist and even communist intentions. In Flanagan’s testimony at the HUAC hearings in September 1938, Congressman Dies twisted Power’s advocacy of public ownership of utilities into hypothetical questions about the possibility of communism in the plays selected by the FTP Play Policy Board. Flanagan defended her board’s selections, saying a play should be “a good play, a powerful play, preferably of native materials […] in accord with general forward-looking tendencies.” Dies argued that plays “which champion one side of a controversy” like Power were propaganda “that could be used and abused.” He questioned whether she would champion a play that called

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for “the public ownership of all the property in the United States.” 40 When she responded

in the negative saying, “we would stop with that because that would be recommending

the overthrow of the United State government,” Dies countered, “in other words, you

would favor doing it by degrees, but not all at once, isn’t that right?” Flanagan countered

Dies’ argument, but the news reporters had their headline, and Flanagan lost the fight in

the court of popular opinion with many papers labeling her a “Red” and highlighting

Dies’ remark.41

HUAC finalized six months of testimony against the FTP in December 1938,

and the Dies Committee Report released a short paragraph a month later, summing up

their findings with the damning statement:

We are convinced that a rather large number of employees on the Federal Theatre Project are either members of the Communist Party or are sympathetic with the communist party.42

Content in plays like Power and testimony against activities witnessed solely in the New

York Unit were the basis of the accusations by the committee.

HUAC’s release corresponded to the planning of an Oregon Unit production of

The Paul Bunyan Festival for the summer of 1939 that would push Whitcomb’s politics in a conservative direction. In a hopeless effort to prove FTP’s American loyalties, the play was planned with FTP Western Regional Directors, the Seattle and Los Angeles

Units and with Flanagan herself, and would tell the story of an anti-union logging hero.

Paul Bunyan Helps the Oregon Unit Fall to the Right

As HUAC’s findings were released to the press, things were looking up for the

Oregon Unit. The Art Center gained approval for funding from the WPA with the

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Portland Civic and University of Oregon as sponsors, Whitcomb was directing professional legitimate actors on loan from Los Angeles and San Francisco with favorable reviews in the press, and she received praise from the highest levels of FTP administration, with Flanagan personally invested in the planning of the Paul Bunyan

Festival. There was nothing communist or socialist about on the lumberjack hero and slice of Americana planned for the Timberline Lodge amphitheatre on Mount Hood. The play Paul Bunyan was pulled from folk tales and fit the pioneering theme of the

Timberline Lodge. The FTP’s need to convince the press, congressional representatives and the American people of their patriotic intent, forced Whitcomb to plan the Paul

Bunyan Festival before the play was written by playwright E.P. Conkle. Conkle wrote the play as a response to socialist and communist allegations against the FTP, with Bunyan fighting against organized labor. The play was not written for an Oregon audience, which supported labor unions in Oregon in 1939. The Bunyan Festival was the Oregon Unit’s way of proving the FTP was “American” at a time when they were under attack, and while the subject matter was Oregonian, with lumberjacks felling trees in the forest, the sentiment in the play did not conform to the Oregonian political view of union activity.

Paul Bunyan follows the narrative of westward expansion, including the extraction and depletion of natural resources on the edge of a depleted frontier. Conkle follows historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 “frontier thesis” to its mythical conclusion, logging the last remnant of pristine wilderness and closing the frontier to the logger-hero forever. For Turner, the frontier defined America and the pioneers, and fostered independence from Europe that helped define who we are as Americans.

Bunyan, the folk-hero, followed the lumberjacks westward from the logging camps of

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Minnesota into the forests of Southern Oregon.43 Bunyan’s logging of the last piece of

the frontier symbolized the closing of the West and the end of the endless supply of forest

and farmland. In his analysis of Turner’s frontier thesis, Roderic Nash explores the

historical framework of wilderness and its relationship with the frontiersman. The

perception of wilderness changed in the late 19th century from “the villain of the national

drama,” as Nash writes, to a force that identified what it meant to be a frontiersman.

Using theatre as a metaphor, Nash writes, “The villain, it appeared, was as vital to the

play as the hero, and, in view of the admirable qualities that contact with wilderness were

thought to have produced, perhaps not so villainous as had been supposed.”44 The

wilderness, for Bunyan, created men who were “honest, faithful and true” and as the

wilderness closed, with the last bastions of timber forested by Bunyan’s men, the

wilderness that defined what it meant to be a frontier lumberjack was being felled with

the harvest. Like many Bunyan tall tales, Conkle wrote a tragedy closing the last bit of

frontier forest with the rise of a modern era that has no use for a logger hero.

The modern era of the late 1930s found delight in the Bunyan tall tale, and the

FDR administration used Bunyan’s heroics to gain support of New Deal programs like

the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Magazine articles comparing the work of the

CCC with Bunyan’s heroics demonstrate the power and popularity of the logger-hero in the 1930s, saying, “Paul Bunyan has a new job now. He’s putting back the forests he skinned with his mighty ax” and that the CCC “adopted Paul Bunyan as its patron saint.”45 There are many parallels between the CCC and Bunyan’s camp, from their work

in the woods, the number of camps constructed, ample food supplied to Bunyan’s “jacks”

and the CCC’s “boys,” and the salvation of both groups of men through hard physical

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labor. Bunyan’s popularity in the press, in children’s stories, and with the physical

connection in Oregon between the CCC and the trails and roads around Timberline

Lodge, would place the audience in the play’s environment.

Whitcomb’s original plan, which grew as regional and national leaders came on

board, was to create a Paul Bunyan Festival at the Timberline Lodge amphitheatre on

Mount Hood featuring Conkle’s play. As the Festival grew, plans were made to bring in

dancers from the Los Angeles Unit and incorporate the Seattle Unit in the festivities.

Without a script, Whitcomb coordinated with E.J. Griffith to send a Western Union telegram to Mabie, the chair of the theatre department at the University of Iowa, where

Conkle was a professor. Whitcomb sent a letter the same day, January 18,1939, on

Griffith’s stationary asking Mabie to talk to Conkle about finishing the play. Griffith’s telegram suggests the urgency of their situation:

PLANS FOR BUNYAN FESTIVAL NEXT SUMMER HAVE CHANGED. WE ARE INTERESTED IN BUNYAN PLAY BY CONKLE EXISTENCE OF WHICH REPORTED BY WHITCOMB. IF WE CAN USE IT WILL YOU AND HE BE INTERESTED IN AN OREGON PREMIER? WOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR SCRIPT AT ONCE EVEN IF NOT COMPLETE.46

The telegram suggests Whitcomb shared the Paul Bunyan Festival concept with Mabie

before January 1939. Griffith was requesting rights to Paul Bunyan before reading the

play, which demonstrates his trust in Whitcomb’s opinion about Conkle’s work as well as

his commitment to the Oregon Unit. In Whitcomb’s letter to Mabie, she states that they

had expected Yasha Frank to write the play, but he was busy as the National Consultant

for the FTP Children’s Theatre. Whitcomb’s coordinated request, written on Griffith’s

WPA stationary, stated, “We want one serious script centering on Bunyan and the lumber

industry as a main feature of the festival, and fortunately I remembered you mentioned

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that Conkle has written on that theme.”47 Ironically, the group of prominent Paul Bunyan

Festival planners wanted a play with Bunyan as a main character, but without having read

the play, were not aware of the play’s anti-union sentiment.

The amphitheatre at Timberline Lodge was an ideal location for the planned

production. Seen today, the amphitheatre has a majestic quality, built by CCC and WPA

labor a short walk from the Lodge, with a backdrop of Mount Jefferson behind the stage

and the grandeur of Mount Hood at the audience’s back. Surrounding the audience on all sides were pine trees, stunted and windswept by years of being on the mountain. The location was, and is today, at the timberline of Mount Hood, with a forest stretching down the mountain in view of the audience, and the rough treeless slopes behind. At the edge of the timberline of the mountain, between a treeless and forested land, the Oregon

Unit planned their production of Paul Bunyan, the story of a man who, according to legend, was the inventor of the lumber industry.48 The amphitheatre was in a natural

setting that fit the elements within the story of Paul Bunyan and his lumberjacks, with a

location framed and constructed to offer sweeping sublime images. While theatrical

landscapes are often seen on stage, in the Timberline amphitheatre the world of the play

also surrounds the audience, who would have sat on half round cedar logs surrounded by

solid granite walls and a large granite stage, linking Mount Hood to the wonder of the

play.

Conkle completed a draft of the play by March 1939 and planning was moved to

the Timberline Lodge. In a letter to Mabie, Whitcomb writes,

Hallie, Guy Williams and I are all much pleased with Conkle’s “Bunyan” and we believe we can do exciting things with it on the side of the mountain. The three of us stayed up at the Lodge two days and two nights going over the script inch by inch and making definite plans for a big event. We could look out of our windows

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to the theatre under fifteen feet of snow.49

Guy Williams was hired as the Oregon Unit Assistant Executive Director, and his

experience relieved much of Whitcomb’s stress, helping to shore up the Oregon Unit and

plan for the troupe’s future.50 Williams, who worked with Glenn Hughes to form the

Seattle Unit of the Federal Theatre, had experience sending shows into the woods as an

organizer of the CCC Federal Theatre Review, with actors “barnstorming” around the

CCC camps in Washington State.51 Williams took over as director of the Seattle Unit

following Glenn Hughes’ departure and was promoted in July 1937 to supervise touring

FTP productions.52 In one of his last acts as director, he oversaw the combination of the

disparate variety and Negro units in Seattle under one roof.

Meanwhile, FTP Director Hallie Flanagan arrived in Oregon at the end of

February 1939, watched Spirochete, the Living Newspaper production about the taboo

subject of syphilis at the Elks Temple Theatre, and stayed at Timberline Lodge through

the first week of March with Whitcomb and Williams to plan the Paul Bunyan

Festival.††† The plan for the Bunyan Festival grew as conversations between Flanagan,

Whitcomb and Williams combined with ideas from representatives of the Western

Region of the FTP. The Festival grew to embrace patriotic features of the Oregon Unit

and the FTP, including a remounting of Conkle’s play about Abraham Lincoln, Prologue

to Glory, and a dance performance of American Exodus by the Myra Kinch Dancers.53

The modern dance piece, American Exodus, was a part of the FTP Dance Project’s

“Festival of American Dance” which performed in Los Angeles in 1937, and depicted

††† Flanagan saw the opening performances of Living Newspaper production, Spirochete. In Arena (302) she mentions the effect of the play on the doctors and nurses in attendance, with the opening Sunday performance, February 26, 1939, endorsed by the Oregon State Medical association. (News Telegram, 2/27/1939, 15) 123

American pioneers settling the country, building homes and celebrating the harvest.54

Kinch was the Los Angeles director and choreographer of the West Coast Dance Project of the FTP and choreographer for the opera department of the Federal Music Project.55

With the inclusion of a patriotic pioneering play featuring Abraham Lincoln and an

American Exodus, the Oregon Trail and the lumberjack would play side by side over four weeks. The plans for the Paul Bunyan Festival, when fully implemented, would create one of the largest FTP productions, incorporating more talent and Western FTP Units than any such festival or project in FTP history, creating what Whitcomb called “an

American Festival.”

While the subject of timber seemed to resonate with the surroundings of

Timberline Lodge, Bunyan did not feature the views of the majority of union members in the forests and mills of Oregon. Conkle’s play is anti-union; Bunyan speaks of the need for his men to focus on “work and discipline… to release them from the troublesome responsibilities of independence.”56 For Bunyan, thinking and independence are poisonous to the lumberjack; instead, he advocates to keep them worry-free and hard- working. Pat Patterson, the king of Europe, owns the rights to the final bit of wilderness left in America, “the Great Augur River.” Patterson gave his claim to Bunyan’s nemesis,

Shot Gunderson, but visits Bunyan’s camp to transfer the rights of the Augur to Bunyan.

In his quest to be the King of America, Patterson must destroy heroes like Bunyan who lie in the way of his conquest. By giving Bunyan the rights to the Great Augur and planting his men in Bunyan’s camp, Patterson seeks to provoke a fight between Bunyan and Gunderson, kill Babe the Blue Ox, and plant seeds of unrest in Bunyan’s men. One of Pat Patterson’s infiltrators begins to unionize the men, saying “A 10-hour day and a

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Laboring Man’s Union! These jacks ain’t got no Rights an’ they don’t know it!”57 The labor demands made by Bunyan’s men; the right to a standard workweek, an increase in wage and recognition of the men by Bunyan as a labor union, were precisely the demands of a huge strike surrounding the timber industry in Oregon in 1935. Nearly forty thousand workers affiliated with the AFL’s Sawmill Workers Union walked off the job, in forests and lumber mills across the state. In planning for the Paul Bunyan Festival, Whitcomb and her team of administrators were placing Bunyan in the position of the Oregon business owner, who came down against unionized workers. Residents of Portland’s East

Side consistently voted for pro-union candidates and gave overwhelming public support to the Sawmill Workers Union during the 1935 strike.‡‡‡ The AFL demanded, and ultimately received, an increase in wages, recognition as a union, and a forty-hour workweek.58 Despite Whitcomb’s hope, Conkle’s play did not resonate with the demands of lumberjacks and millwrights in the forests of Oregon in 1939.

In Paul Bunyan, Conkle created an American hero that disagrees with organized labor because it is against the workers’ better nature. Those who advocate for unionization within the play are depicted as deceitful, while the unknowing jack is honest and true. Standing against the lures of modernity were the values of the “heroic logger,” personified in Bunyan. In the play Bunyan declares, “…history, industry, invention and oratory are the four mighty delights of a hero. And next to them came the joys of comradeship with men of muscle.” 59 In order for the men to strive to be more like

Bunyan, the true and honest hero, the lumberjacks must be free from want, and as long as

‡‡‡ From 1910-1917 Will Daly, president of the Oregon State Federation of Labor and Portland Labor Council, won many elections in Portland, and in 1917 came very close to defeating George Baker to become mayor. Daly’s victories came by overwhelmingly carrying Portland’s East Side neighborhoods. (Johnston, Robert D. 2003. The radical middle class: populist democracy and the question of capitalism in progressive era Portland, Oregon. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 99-114) 125

they maintain this life, Bunyan will keep them happy. To be a real American hero, what

Bunyan calls his “honest-to-the-stars-and-stripes he-men,” they must remain faithful to work, to laboring and camaraderie. There is a strong sentiment in the play that wicked union organizers manipulated honest hard working American laborers during the 1930s.

Bunyan comes to realize his men have been manipulated, and like King Lear or

Zeus, he yells out to heaven,

Who has been trying to make common human beings out of my men—giving them notions, headaches and dull mutterings? Who? Who? [His voice knocks the men down. They get up grumbling audibly, mad.] Fetch me the hurricane, the water spout, the fog, the cantankerous, blasted river, and I can fight! I can move mountains, and carry ships in the palm of my hand, and fill up seas and oceans!... I can meet brawn with brawn! [He lowers his head.] But this is a mist and mystery in my brain. Johnny [Inkslinger] says I lack to understand subtleties. I say—where have these putrid, pettifogging chimeras and vicious thoughts come from?60

In the past, Bunyan’s acts of bravery galvanized the men to his side, so he decides to get

them back with one last act of bravery. Bunyan leaves to fight his nemesis, Shot

Gunderson, who holds the lumber rights to the Great Auger territory. In the showdown

scene, we discover that Gunderson is an unstoppable ironman, a steam-powered lumberjack. Gunderson represents modern industry: clear cutting forestland faster than all of Bunyan’s men can manage. The competition between man and machine becomes a fight to the death, with Bunyan outwitting Gunderson, who falls into a river extinguishing his fire. Bunyan victoriously returns to camp to tell tall tales of the hero’s journey, only to find the camp deserted. Patterson’s men convince the lumberjacks to leave camp and become farmers in the Corn Pone Country. Bunyan’s loss did not come at the hands of industry, but from the infiltration of ideas of a modern world. He could vanquish

Gunderson, but not the power of an idea.

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In the final scene of the play, Bunyan observes his men living their lives with

wives, children, friends, and jobs in the Corn Pone Country. They are farmers and

inventors of machinery that harvests timber. With the closing of the frontier, and the

civilization of the entire nation, Bunyan realizes there is no place for the hero lumberjack,

and decides to move to the North Country.

Despite the planning at the state and national level, the timing of the Paul Bunyan

Festival, to begin in July of 1939, meant that the production never took place. Congress

cut off funding for the FTP on June 30, 1939, and all FTP performances were

subsequently canceled. The hope had been that the Paul Bunyan Festival upon the

amphitheatre at Timberline Lodge would help patriotically repaint the FTP nationally and

the Oregon Unit locally. The planning of Cockle’s play turned the Oregon Unit to the

political right, a direction they may have continued had the FTP extended into 1940. The

Bunyan Festival was part of a long line of patriotic FTP displays and performances in

1939, including the World’s Fair in New York and Treasure Island in San Francisco, that

were used by Flanagan to convince Congress to support the FTP in the 1940 budget

debate. Perhaps if Flanagan could have convinced Congress that regional Units like

Oregon’s were a better representative example of the FTP nationally, then the entirety of

the FTP may have been saved.

When a Tree Falls in the Forest

Following the Dies Committee Report stating that communists resided in the ranks of the FTP, Flanagan met with Eleanor Roosevelt in late January 1939, shortly after her stay in Oregon. She later wrote, “we are trying in every way to develop a program

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which will meet wide community needs and sponsorship. This is the only way we have of

combating the false statements circulated by newspapers which choose to play up the

garbled testimony of incompetent witnesses before the Dies Committee.”61 The Paul

Bunyan Festival was a part of her plan to gain wider public support for the Oregon Unit,

and ultimately for the FTP by developing a program that moved away from leftist

thought. In a speech made to New York Unit supervisors, Flanagan stressed the need for

the all FTP units to gain support by embracing Whitcomb’s proposal to increase the

number of loan actors to smaller FTP Units. Flanagan’s last trip to Oregon as FTP

director came in March 1939 after Congress had withdrawn $1.5 million from the relief budget. She assisted in planning the Paul Bunyan Festival on Mount Hood, and continued on to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Expo where the FTP featured a continuous performance in a state of the art theatre.

In May, Congressman Clifton Woodrum of Virginia launched the final attack against the FTP, with allegations that the FTP was creating “lewd theatre” that “ran over budget.”62 Congressmen called witnesses attacking the New York musical Sing for Your

Supper, and again sensational headlines called the FTP activities subversive.63 Later in

May, Mabie wrote Whitcomb asking if the Paul Bunyan Festival was “going forward or has it been wrecked by the reorganization procedures?”64 The “reorganization” was a bill

placed on the floor of the House eliminating funds for the FTP. Whitcomb responded to

Mabie’s letter writing that planning for the Festival was difficult with so many

administrators on the committee. The project budget, including a production of Bunyan,

Prologue to Glory and the Myra Kinch Dancers, had risen to $7,300, and Whitcomb

wrote, “…we found the nut too big to be taken care of by subscription.” Adjusting to

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2013 buying power, the cost of the project had ballooned to $22,000.65 Due to the situation in Washington, D.C., the Bunyan Festival was scaled down and had to work with a “$1,300 other-than-labor cost budget,” while receiving subscription help from the

Oregonian newspaper promotion department. To make up the difference Guy Williams traveled to Seattle to request help from the Western Lumberman’s Association headquarters. The Congressional committee hearings and attacks on the FTP nationally were having a direct effect on the Oregon Unit.

The Oregon Unit finished their production of The Milky Way on May 27, 1939, and with its budget cut, did not mount a production in June. Whitcomb wrote, “the present painful period of waiting to see whether or how far the ax will fall on Federal

Theatre gives an opportunity for letters.” Despite the pain, Whitcomb wrote of her plan for her Grass Roots Theatre and gave a hopeful and optimistic tone, with personal plans outlined should the FTP fold or continue. “Of course,” she said, “plans for Paul Bunyan at Timberline are at a standstill until we know more of our fate from Congress.”66

The House of Representatives sent a relief bill to the Senate removing the Federal

Theatre Project from Federal One. The debate and attack on the Federal Theatre spread to

the floor of the Senate with Robert Reynolds of North Carolina not only reiterating

charges of Communist sympathies within the FTP’s ranks, but ridiculing the FTP’s

inclusion of African Americans, saying, “…free love and racial equality—is being spread at the expense of the God-fearing, home-loving American taxpayer who must pay the bills for all this dangerous business.”67 Flanagan herself began to believe the reason for

the attack against the FTP by the conservative delegation may have come from the

position the FTP maintained giving opportunity to African American actors, like Lee

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Grigsby in the Oregon Unit. The fact that FTP Units across the country presented multi-

racial casts in productions was used as a weapon against them on the floor of the Senate.

The larger implication around Reynolds’ stance was that the entire attack against the FTP was because of racial fear. Reynolds and his supporters were in the minority in the

Senate, as Senators came to the FTP’s defense with the Wagner-Downey-Pepper amendment restoring the FTP, which passed by a vote of 54 to 9.

News of the support of the FTP in the Senate spread quickly. On June 30, Mabie wrote Whitcomb, “Late news indicates that we may not lose the whole of the Federal

Theatre after all. It may be that some of the unsatisfactory things will be sluffed off and we will be able to go ahead with the good things without carrying useless burdens.”68

Mabie had helped Flanagan with the first organizing documents of the FTP. The attack on the FTP had made an impression on the administrator, and Whitcomb’s work with the

Oregon Unit was part of the “good things” about the entire organization. The Senate victory was short lived, however, as the House and Senate Appropriations Committees

came together to hammer out the competing differences between the two sides. The bill

had to be signed by June 30 in order to keep the WPA and other relief organizations

running. At the eleventh hour the last concession made in order to secure an agreement

was the elimination of the FTP. In the final bill, the FTP was singled out and eliminated,

while other WPA arts projects within Federal One had to secure more local money and

sponsorships.

The Paul Bunyan Festival, planned in a theatre designed for FTP performances,

never took place. FTP was not a national theatre, with a large theatre in a capital city, but

as congressional judgment fell the only theatre in the spotlight was that of New York.

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The Oregon Unit and the entire FTP network was judged on the work and political

actions of a single unit, while the senators and congressional representatives came from

districts in states that also housed FTP units. Why more elected officials did not defend

their state FTP units against the Dies and Woodrum Committees illustrate a fear of

supporting “Reds” amongst the voting public. Early in the Dies Committee hearings

Flanagan spoke out and was given a gag order by WPA administrators. Had she been able to defend the FTP from hearsay testimony, perhaps the argument would have died in committee rather than being brought to the floor of both houses. Either way, the actions of other FTP units outside New York had little to do with the downfall of the whole

organization, and the entirety of the FTP suffered because of the testimony of a few.

Whitcomb’s play selection from the political left to the right negotiated between the needs of conservative politics in Oregon and the changing decisions of FTP

administration desperately trying to throw off the communist veil placed by the Dies

Committee. Whitcomb’s play selection from the productions of Power and The Yellow

Harvest to the planned production of Paul Bunyan and the final two performances of

apolitical plays, demonstrates Whitcomb’s effectiveness as an administrator. She was

able to adapt the troupe to the will of local politicians while also conforming, to the

changing will of FTP administration once the communist veil of the Dies Committee

descended. Her final negotiation, moving away from more liberal New Deal views, was

part of a long river of often turbulent waters navigated successfully. Whitcomb was

willing to adapt to the will of FTP administration in the retraining of vaudevillians and in

her negotiations with the Portland Civic to create an Art Center for the city of Portland,

despite her rough political history with the organization. She made the Oregon Unit a

131 testing ground for the retaining of vaudeville talent through Children’s Theatre, and performed politically risky plays like Power to show administrators the value of her troupe. If her play selection in 1936 is an indication of her political leanings, Whitcomb was willing to disconnect from her own political views and move her play selection to the right in order to help the FTP in difficult times. Her drive to create high quality entertainment for the people of Portland brought Whitcomb praise from Flanagan and

Griffith, and was the reason Oregon became a Model Unit.

Whitcomb negotiated the Oregon political arena, anticipating national trends that made the Oregon Unit more resilient and ready to move forward with or without her guidance. Whitcomb wrote Mabie days before the FTP came to a close,

Temperamentally, I get bored when things are rolling along on a level and this seems to be the case with our theatre in Portland now. We would be glad if a great advance could be made in our local company, but I realize that about as high a grade of performance as they will ever reach has been achieved. It has seemed to me that someone else could keep our monthly shows rolling here, and I want to get out on a new venture.69

Unlike her previous desire to quit the Oregon Unit, Whitcomb was pleased with where she was able to take the unit and ready to go on to another job if the FTP closed. High- quality theatre was needed across the state through the Federal Art Projects. Whitcomb was beginning a new chapter as a theatre pioneer heading into Oregon to teach theatre art.

She was anticipating and adapting to the topography of her situation, just as she did through the course of the Oregon Unit. The only woman FTP state director would land on her feet as the Director of Theatre for the Oregon Federal Art Project.

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Notes

1 Frederick Schlick, The Yellow Harvest, National Archives and Records Administration, E917, Box 355, page 8, quoted in Osborne, Staging the People, 236.

2 “Flax Festival Schedule”, Mount Angel News, August 13, 1936.

3 “Flax Festival Here Proved to be a Success,” Mount Angel News, September 10, 1939, 10.

4 Frederick Schlick, Bloodstream: A Play in Three Acts (Boston: Walter H. Baker Company, 1934).

5 “Proved to be a Success,” September 10, 1939, 10.

6 Osborne, Staging the People, 209-210.

7 Susan McKenzie, “Monk Helped Boost Mount Angel Flax Industry,” Catholic Sentinel, 6/8/2001 (1/30/2013).

8 Oregon Experiment Station, Cost in Fiber Flax Production in the Willamette Valley Oregon (Oregon State System of Higher Education, 1938), 10.

9 Frederick Schlick, The Yellow Harvest, National Archives and Records Administration, E917, Box 355, page 8, quoted in Osborne, Staging the People, 212.

10 Oregon Experiment Station, “Flax Production,” 7.

11 Schlick, The Yellow Harvest, 8.

12 Osborne, Staging the People, 213.

13 Schlick, The Yellow Harvest, 21-22.

14 Osborne, Staging the People, 214.

15 Federal Writers' Project (OR), Oregon, End of the Trail (Portland: Binfords & Mort, 1940).

16 Whitcomb to Mabie, 14 August 1937, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

17 Federal Theatre Project, First Production Conference, 36. (see chap. 1, note 41)

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18 “WPA Play to Feature Saturday: Tapestry in Linen,” Mount Angel News, August 12, 1937, 1.

19 Whitcomb to Mabie, 14 August 1937, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

20 Flanagan, Arena, 298.

21 “Tapestry in Linen,” August 12, 1937, 1.

22 “Living Newspaper Idea Has Tremendous Possibilities, Facts are Presented Forcefully,” Oregon Sunday Journal, August 29, 1937, section 4, 1.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 MacColl, Growth of a City, 443-444.

26 Ibid, 444.

27 Ibid, 447.

28 Witham, Federal Theatre, 87.

29 Ibid, 79.

30 Harvard Law Review, “the Judiciary Act of 1937”. (1937) Vol. 51, No. 1, Nov., 148-149 (http://www.jstor.org/).

31 MacColl, Growth of a City, 449.

32 Ibid, 451-2.

33 Federal Theatre Project (U.S.), Arthur Arent, Arnold Sundgaard, and Pierre de Rohan, “Triple-A Plowed Under,” in Federal Theatre Plays 1 (New York: Random House, 1938), 62-63.

34 Ibid, 61.

35 Ibid, 63.

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36 Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1998), xiv.

37 MacColl, Growth of a City, 447.

38 “New Deal Stage: Production Notebook from Portland production of Power,” Library of Congress American Memory, Box 1057, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi- bin/ampage?collId=ftp&fileName=fprpt/1057/10570011/ftp10570011page.db&recNum= 0.

39 Ibid.

40 Bentley, Hallie Flanagan, 321. (see Introduction, note 2)

41 Ibid, 307.

42 Ibid, 326.

43 W. B. Laughead, Paul Bunyan and His Big Blue Ox: Their Marvelous Exploits (Westwood, CA: Red River Lumber Company, 1944), 4 and 7.

44 Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 145.

45 “Rebuilding Paul Bunyan’s Empire,” Popular Mechanics Magazine 73.5 (May 1940), 674, quoted in Neil M. Maher, Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 157.

46 Telegram from E.J. Griffith to Mabie, 18 January 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

47 Whitcomb to Mabie, 18 January1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

48 James Stevens and Allen Lewis, Paul Bunyan (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1925), 11.

49 Whitcomb to Mabie, 9 March 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

50 Witham, Federal Theatre, 87-89.

135

51 Ibid, 37.

52 Ibid, 58.

53 Whitcomb to Mabie, 9 March 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

54 Julia L. Foulkes, Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 146.

55 “Obituaries: Hershy Kay; Myra Kinch, Lotte Lenya, Dance Magazine (1982), 112-114.

56 Stevens, Bunyan, 18.

57 Ibid, 20.

58 Tom Fuller and Art Ayre, Oregon at Work: 1859-2009 (Portland: Ooligan Press, 2009), 90-91.

59 Stevens, Bunyan 10-11.

60 Ibid, 51

61 Bentley, Hallie Flanagan, 330.

62 Flanagan, Arena, 348-51.

63 Bentley, Hallie Flanagan, 336-7.

64 Whitcomb to Mabie, 16 May 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

65 “CPI Inflation Calculator,” Division of Consumer Prices and Price Indexes, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1 =7%2C300 &year1=1939&year2=2013.

66 Whitcomb to Mabie, 24 June 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

136

67 Bentley, Hallie Flanagan, 344.

68 Mabie to Whitcomb, 30 June 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

69 Whitcomb to Mabie, 24 June 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

“The close association of the theatre with the evocation of the past, the histories and legends of the culture uncannily restored to a mysterious half-life, has made the theatre in the minds of many the art most closely related to memory and the theatre building itself a kind of memory machine.” 1 - Marvin Carlson

In The Haunted Stage, Marvin Carlson argues that theatre is a memory machine, a place of ghosts, repeated and passed down, adapted to the needs of the people it serves; then it is passed down again. The space, the actors, the play text, and the productions themselves are “recycled” over time, and as this process continues, the theatre memory machine is performing its memory function. But when an abrupt halt occurs, such as the final curtain for the Oregon Unit and the Federal Theatre project, the memory machine powers down, and can no longer perform its function. This concluding chapter will reveal ghosts of the Oregon Unit in three areas: vaudeville, the Little Theatre Movement, and local and national government agencies. The Oregon Unit had a lasting impact that, while non-material, changed the theater community, influenced community and governmental partnerships, and furthered the careers of actors and administrators.

One of the Oregon Unit ghosts is Jack Biles, a popular Portland vaudeville dancer, and dance instructor who became a member of the Oregon Unit in 1937, dancing in many of their vaudeville performances. When the Oregon Unit dance choreographer

Florence Nelson left Portland to work in Hollywood, Biles took over choreography for the Unit. Descending from the Garden Home area of Southwest Portland, Oregon, the 32 year-old Biles was well-known for his “cheery grin and the friendly handclasp” and

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helped organize the Actors Club of Portland in 1938, an exclusive “entertainers only”

club where all members had to be involved in professional entertainment, in nightclubs,

bars or theatre, or report on entertainment in Portland. The Actors Club met sporadically,

hosting “jam” sessions on Sunday evenings, featuring a “who’s who” of Portland talent

as well as touring celebrities. When the Club hosted official parties, called “Frolics,”

Biles was the master of ceremonies along with featured member performances.

Whitcomb and members of the Oregon Unit were regulars at the jam session and the

Frolics, and in December 1938 the Oregon Unit performed ten acts of vaudeville for the

jam session the Sunday before Christmas.

The Actor’s Club opened its doors to the public for a “New Years Eve Frolic” in

December 1938. The party was well financed, with sizable advertising starting weeks prior the event in all the major Portland newspapers. As the newly elected president of the Actors Club, Biles was featured in advertisements as the master of ceremonies along with “Ten Big Vaudeville Acts,” the same performance the Oregon Unit presented before

Christmas. Popularly priced tickets for the New Years Frolic were $1.50, with noisemakers included. The night of floorshow dancing to Ed Lund’s Swing Band would make the end of 1938 a night to remember.

At 6:30 pm on New Year’s Eve, before the festivities began, while walking in an

East Side neighborhood on 31st Avenue, Jack Biles was struck by a hit and run driver.

The Daily Journal reported that 18-year-old Charlotte Boerger, who also lived in the neighborhood, was walking with him and was unhurt. Biles died of a skull fracture at St.

Vincent’s Hospital at 1:47 am, becoming the first Portland traffic fatality of 1939.2

Journal theatre critic Harold Hunt published Biles’ epitaph, fittingly enough, under the

139 feature “More Show Gossip:”

Years of association with one of the kindliest spirits of Portland’s amusement world had taught us to appreciate his worth, both as a friend and as an antidote when life became too serious. Jack Biles helped many a man and many a woman to many a laugh, and his passing, early New Years day, victim of a motor maniac, too cowardly to stay his mad rush and offer what atonement he could for his recklessness, brought many a tear and many a heartache.[…] There will be no "jam" session at the Actors' club, of which he was the newly elected president tonight. With Jack gone , who could make merry?3

The sudden loss of Biles had a tremendous impact on the Oregon Unit and the

Portland entertainment community. Hunt reported that Finley's chapel was overflowing, with more mourners seated outside than inside the chapel. A large number of Portland residents who attended Biles dance classes for the WPA recreation project in Portland and his personal studio may have swelled the attendance for his funeral. The Oregon Unit performed Alice in Wonderland (which Biles choreographed) the Saturday after his death, but delayed the opening of Prologue to Glory for three weeks to the end of January

1939. Biles played a part in the choreography for all of the Oregon Unit productions, and with his passing, Alice in Wonderland became the last children’s show produced by the

Oregon Unit. His death changed the course of the Oregon Unit and The Actors Club, which did not meet again until March.

Biles ran a dance studio for years in the Studio Building in downtown Portland, just below the Taylor Street Theatre, which held many Oregon Unit performances, and today houses a reported ghost. I visited the theatre, which is now the office of a film distribution company occupying the entire top floor. While the theatre has been converted into office cubicles – the steel gates to the theatre are still in operation and lock up the facility each night. To my surprise, the gates feature Greek comedy and tragedy masks bent into the ornamental designs, similar to WPA ironwork and ornamental gate

140 work found at Timberline Lodge. The receptionist shared a story of a ghost who haunts the floor, opening up filing drawers and scattering files and papers around the office after the gates are locked for the night. The file drawer problem was so acute the office staff had to begin locking every filing cabinet at the end of the workday.4

Carlson argues that the theatre is a location for ghosts, for haunting, because in the theatre the past is constantly dug up and presented to the audience. Because theatre is ephemeral, existing only in the mind of the audience or the actor performing, performances are quickly lost along with the names and faces of the performer. The work of famous local stage actors and choreographers such as Biles, are lost to directors looking to reproduce and re-imagine the performance. Biles’ artistic work, while in the minds of hundreds of mourners, and embodied in the dance moves of many Portlanders in 1939, was lost because the memory machine powered down. This study has attempted to remember lost Oregonian performers, pulling them out of the shadows to center stage.

New Deal legacies inhabit the landscape all around us in the state of Oregon.

Constructed by the workers of the New Deal, material legacies like the Bonneville Dam, the Timberline Lodge, Wolf Creek Highway, the Portland International Airport and the

State Capitol Building, have lasted almost a hundred years. While these legacies stand the test of time, there are other non-material legacies, like the contributions made to Oregon by the Oregon Unit, which deserve attention. The non-material legacies of the WPA in

Oregon, the ghosts haunting the stage of the Oregon Unit, are as significant and lasting as the material legacies constructed of concrete, wood and iron. The Oregon Unit spurred a network of new thoughts and ideas through the theatre arts community regionally that changed what theatre could look like in Portland and around the region. The State

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Theatre idea was brought forward in the negotiations between Whitcomb and the

Portland Civic, pulling theatre into the educational mission of the University of Oregon.

Connections were made within the State Theatre Conference, which inspired a young

Horace Robinson to connect with Portland theatre administrators as well as regional high

school theatre teachers.

The relationships that were already present between Whitcomb and the Portland

Civic grew into a community partnership between local, state and federal agencies. This

relationship changed the ties between the organizations and outlasted the FTP. Finally,

the careers of vaudevillians and administrators did not end in 1939, but continued on

stage in Portland, on the studio lots in Hollywood, and in the halls of academia. For

individuals in the Oregon Unit, the job was more than a relief position, it was a vehicle

that allowed talented vaudevillians to continue their craft, and administrators to gain

experience that built their careers. The non-material legacies, found in the new ideas,

constructed WPA partnerships and the future careers in the Oregon Unit that are

intangible remnants left by the WPA in Oregon.

The Oregon Unit Influence Ideas About Theatre in Portland

One of the “ghosts” of the Oregon Unit was a renewed public and entrepreneurial

interest in vaudeville in the city of Portland. During the late 1930s, several vaudeville

houses opened in Portland as the local economy rebounded. The Oregon Unit kept

vaudeville alive for the general public, increasing its exposure by offering free

performances throughout the city from 1936 through their final vaudeville performance

in 1938. The free performances kept vaudeville as a craft present for many Portlanders

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who had a limited, if non-existent entertainment budget. The Oregon Unit was the only local professional vaudeville troupe (outside of the Capitol Theatre East Coast circuit) performing in Portland and its popularity gave rise to local vaudeville entrepreneurs who saw a niche in the market. The new theatres presented “stage productions and top circuit vaudeville… together with first-run motion pictures,” increasing the number of vaudeville entertainers on stage in Portland. The Rivoli reopened its doors in downtown

Portland in May 1937 after a $40,000 renovation. An investment group out of Salem,

Oregon, and the Sterling Theatre chain out of Seattle purchased the largest downtown theatres, with the Orpheum Theatre (at Broadway and Yamhill in downtown Portland) acquired by Sterling Theatres the day after Congress defunded the FTP on July 1, 1939.5

Many vaudeville houses in Portland at the beginning of the Great Depression collapsed,

leaving only The Capitol Theatre, but the Oregon Unit kept the idea of vaudeville and the

popularity of the performances alive.

The largest numbers in attendance for Oregon Unit vaudeville performances

happened in the Portland area parks such as Laurelhurst from 1936-37. Without a theatre

in the first years of existence, Whitcomb’s creativity with limited resources created the

“ghost” of regular summer outdoor theatre in Portland parks. Outdoor spaces in Portland

parks and at the Reed College outdoor amphitheatre were free and available to the FTP,

and without a budget to rent a theatre space, Whitcomb had to be resourceful. As the FTP

began, with 90 percent of the budget spent on labor, and renting a building did not fit into

the budget and was out of the question. Gate receipts would make up some of the cost of

rental, giving the Oregon Unit a chance to perform in theatres such as Portland’s

Auditorium and Benson Polytechnic auditorium. Whitcomb relied on the talents of her

143 vaudevillians who had readymade material to present to the public, and on the kindness of the city of Portland and the Portland Parks Department. Whitcomb’s experience working with Portland city officials in the early 1930s on Portland Civic productions of

Alice in Wonderland during the Rose Festival made the idea of performing outdoors in

Oregon not so farfetched. In 1938, she worked with the City of Portland and Portland

Parks on a parks tour of Taming of the Shrew, featuring a portable stage on a converted flatbed trailer supplied by the city. Tens of thousands of patrons came to parks around

Portland to see the events. The tradition of performing outdoors in Portland parks continued with the Portland Civic and today Portland area residents can choose from several outdoor theatre troupes, including Portland Actors Ensemble, now in its 43rd year.6 The parks space is no longer free, but the idea of performing outdoors today was born from the need Whitcomb had in the 1930s: having a very low budget and a need to perform. By performing outdoors in the inclimate weather of the Pacific Northwest, the

Oregon Unit changed the vision of what open park spaces around Portland could become.

As national attention focused on the Oregon Unit the play selection became more of what FTP administration wanted, following the HUAC charges and less of the fun loving vaudeville-inspired troupe the Oregon Unit had become. Whitcomb’s negotiation, changing the productions of the Oregon Unit to the will of FTP administration, was drastic and meant little after HUAC fixed the “Red” label on the New York Unit. In the wake of Jack Biles’ death and the Unit’s move to the political center; plays presented by the Oregon Unit became character driven, dark and introspective. Plays like Night Must

Fall, about the work of a serial killer, were far from standard Oregon Unit programming.

With the change came free childcare featuring marionette shows for the children while

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the grisly production entertained parents, and audience questionnaires asked patrons how

they felt about the changes taking place. Whitcomb’s move towards legitimate theatre

was dark and ominous, and very different from the frivolity of previous years.

Whitcomb’s move to a central political position also brought many FTP and WPA

administrators into the conversation, supporting the play Paul Bunyan and the work of

the Oregon Unit. As more administrators entered the conversation, the troupe had

increased national oversight, and with increased oversight, fewer vaudeville performers

on the payroll were receiving parts with direction of the troupe increasingly handled by actors on loan, such as Leon Forbes from San Francisco. Newspaper headlines featuring communist accusations about the New York Unit dwarfed any changes made in the

Oregon Unit.

Community Partnerships

Political maneuverings behind the scenes by Whitcomb and Griffith opened new

possibilities for theatre in Portland. While the actual Oregon Unit theatre performances

were ephemeral, the political maneuverings with the Portland Civic, the city of Portland

and the University of Oregon changed how they viewed theatre as an art. Griffith’s dream

of an Art Center during negotiation with the Portland Civic changed the Portland Civic

Board of Director’s vision and mission for their organization, ultimately creating a State

Theatre. Griffith’s administrative prowess and Whitcomb’s unique position bridged

artistic, administrative, and political communities, and expanded the possibilities of

theatre in Portland.

The State Theatre was a “ghost” of the Oregon Unit that began with Griffith’s

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dream of the Art Center, transformed into a conference and ultimately changed the

mission of the Portland Civic as they moved into a permanent theatre space in the 1940s.

Griffith’s idea of an Art Center Theatre as the central State Theatre of Oregon was

fashioned after other FTP State Theatres such as the Pasadena Playhouse. Before

Whitcomb approached the Portland Civic to build the WPA Art Center Theatre, both

theatre troupes were performing in various theatres, halls, clubs and parks in Portland.

The Portland Civic and the Oregon Unit struggled loading-in scenery in facilities poorly

equipped for their production, so vast in size, such as the Portland Auditorium that the

actor’s voices could not be heard. Before negotiations with Whitcomb, the Portland Civic

was looking to repurpose a building in Downtown Portland for a theatre, and to house the

Portland Civic Theatre School. As negotiations with Whitcomb moved forward with the

Portland Civic Board of Directors, the idea of a State Theatre became a part of

negotiations, the Portland Civic began to engage the Oregon theatre teachers in State

Theatre Conferences, original play competitions, and finally into a physical Portland

Civic theatre in the 1940s which included a dedicated State Theatre library. The State

Theatre Conference and the library allowed theatre educators in high schools and universities to create a community that had never existed before.

The University of Oregon entered the conversation around the State Theater

through Dean Powers of the University of Oregon Extension in Portland. The University

of Oregon Extension and the Portland Civic entered into an agreement to give college

credit for Portland Civic Theatre School classes. Under the WPA Art Center agreement

the University of Oregon agreed to pay for a portion of the “other-than-labor” costs,

becoming a facility sponsor with the Portland Civic of the facility. With the negotiations,

146 the ties between the Portland Civic and the University of Oregon became closer, with

Dean Powers engaging in many board meetings, and former University of Oregon Vice

President Burt Brown Barker, joining the Portland Civic Board. As the idea of a State

Theater moved forward with representatives of the University of Oregon Extension on the Portland Civic Board in the conversation, the first State Theatre Conferences was held in 1937, bringing college professors and high school teachers together to talk about the struggles of producing educational theatre in Oregon. University of Oregon theatre professor, Horace Robinson, was a featured participant traveling from the main campus in Eugene for the first State Theatre Conference, and subsequent conferences in Portland.

Robinson delivered several lectures, such as “The Production Problems of High School and Community Theatres,” that identify the conference experience.7 The Art Center idea, as a central hub of theatre in the state, had a direct connection to the idea of the State

Theatre, which became a resource for theatre teachers from high school to college.

Forward-Moving Careers

The closing of the FTP in cities across the country placed thousands of theatre workers on the streets looking for work. Where did the 55 Oregon Unit employees go?

Many of the performers and workers in the Oregon Unit were above the age of 50, and after the Congressional decision, their Portland job prospects were minimal. As the debate over the value of the FTP came down to the wire in the Senate, Dr. G. Gallup, director of the American Institute of Public Opinion, published findings of a poll asking a segment of the 20 million Americans on relief (one family in six) about their job and job prospects. Gallup’s study not only helps answer the question of where the older Oregon

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Unit vaudevillians went, but echoes trouble found in our current economic downturn in

2013. Testimony in 2012 before the special committee on aging in the Senate echoes

Gallup’s statistic of 1939, finding that unemployed workers over the age of 55 were

looking for work, on average, for 51 weeks, compared to 37.4 weeks for the population

as a whole.8 In 1939, Gallup found that 70% of the relief workers over 50 had given up hope for a regular job in private industry. Gallup’s survey found the average relief worker has looked for work for 3 years or more, with 38% saying they have not had steady work outside of the WPA for four years or more.9 The closing of the FTP meant

the prospects for Oregon Unit actors and technicians were grim.

During the FTP years in cities like New York, the FTP gave technicians and actors the opportunity to practice their art and remain in the industry. Flanagan convinced theatre labor unions not to strike against the FTP, which had lower wages than the unions, by convincing them the FTP would not compete for union jobs but would instead create a pool of talent ready for union labor once the theatre industry picked up. Once the

FTP closed, a large pool of FTP labor suddenly entered the job market. While jobs were hard to come by in 1939, FTP laborers began competing for union and non-union positions on the professional stage.

The Oregon Unit had offered a place for performers to continue their craft in the middle of the Great Depression. Without such opportunity, many actors who would go on to a career on the stage and in the film industry may have been sidetracked from their success. While the stage career of actors working for the Oregon Unit is difficult to uncover, actors who worked in the movie industry were seen as local heroes and mentioned in Portland newspapers. Florence Nelson and Don Porter, who left the Oregon

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Unit before 1939, had careers in Hollywood. Nelson, choreographer for the Oregon Unit

before Jack Biles, moved to Hollywood in November 1937, dancing in the film Rosalie

based on the Cole Porter musical and worked with Bing Crosby.10 Porter, who was

trained as an actor by Whitcomb and played Petruchio in the Oregon Unit’s Taming of

the Shrew, had a film and television career that spanned six decades, working in Westerns and World War II films in the late 1940s and early ‘50s and moving on to television

where he stared in the 1960s as Sally Field’s father in Gidget. Porter played supporting

roles in the 1970s, working with Lucille Ball in Mame and Robert Redford in The

Candidate, with his final role coming in 1988.11 Exactly when Crooner Lee Grigsby

moved to Hollywood is a mystery because he performed in the vaudeville act Here You

Are through May 1938, but was not in their production of Power in March of that year.

The Oregon Unit featured Grigsby in early productions, but as an African American, race

may have limited his exposure in the Portland press. By May 1939, Grigsby moved to

Los Angeles and was featured in the play The Lucky Accident by John Kinloch by the

“12th Street YWCA branch Business and Professional Women’s Club” at the Hamilton

Methodist Church.12 The lives and careers of other Oregon Unit actors is an area for future research, but the Oregon Unit helped Nelson, Porter and Grigsby gather experience

when few opportunities existed for professional actors in Oregon and helped launch their

careers.

Bess Whitcomb: Portland’s Theatrical Pioneer

Whitcomb was negotiating the possibilities of how theatre could work in Oregon,

presenting the Grass Roots Theatre idea with Williams to the Oregon Federal Art Project

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just before Congress eliminated the FTP. The Art Project approved the idea at the state

level and Griffith told Whitcomb she would have a job with the WPA as long as he was

state director. She began working for the Federal Art Project in July 1939, pulling

together her Grass Roots Theatre idea at the Art Center in Salem, and then working

several months on the Oregon Coast at a small Curry County Art Center in Gold Beach.

She had experience working on the coast having toured with the Oregon Unit in March

1938 performing a show titled Here You Are at the Art Center in Marshfield (Coos Bay)

and in WPA camps. Whitcomb enjoyed the Oregon Coast, writing to Mabie, “I’m still

having a whale of a time in Gold Beach. The impact does not lessen of ocean, hills, sky,

stars, clean fragrant air, dancing, [and] basketball games.”13

At the Curry County Art Center, she worked with the leading attorney, the

postmaster, the town’s hardware merchant, the dentist and the “town’s most brilliant

loafer,” teaching them to act in classes and directing them in productions. 14 Following

her work in Gold Beach, she moved on to open a theatre program at the Art Center in

LaGrande, Oregon. While her work with the Art Centers around the state kept her employed with the WPA, it was also rewarding. In her work, she saw the possibilities of what theatre could do for the community. She wrote Mabie,

I believe the real justification for the expenditure of government money is the change that comes to individual lives. I hear not one woman but many say, ‘I’m never bored anymore. Life in Gold Beach is more exciting than I’ve dreamed it could be.’ Discussion of plays, general Art Center subjects, even amateur philosophy and politics is gradually displacing gossip.15

Whitcomb was proud of her work in Gold Beach, sending several letters to Mabie from

her residence at The Sunset Inn. Whitcomb sent Photos of the Curry County Art Center in

one letter featuring the room where performances took place and children and adults

150 participating in a theatrical makeup class in the facility. Her work in Gold Beach was touching lives, and expanding what art could be in Curry County for children and adults alike.

Working with the Art Center offered Whitcomb a living wage in a job that she enjoyed, but it was very different from working with skilled actors, even vaudevillians.

As a former employee of the FTP working on the Art Project, Whitcomb was under the constant threat of dismissal in 1940, with conservative congressional representatives seeking to remove all former FTP employees who moved to other Federal One projects after closing the FTP. Whitcomb wrote,

It seems that Woodrum of Virginia is making the statement that no theatrical activity of any kind is to continue under the auspices of WPA and that he will see that investigators are sent out to assure that elimination. This was spoken with reference to actors being taken onto the Education and Recreation Projects, but if true will probably apply equally to art centers. 16

Throughout the months leading up to the demise of the FTP and with the threat of dismissal from the Federal Art Project, Whitcomb kept in constant communication with

Mabie about returning to college to get a Masters degree at the University of Iowa.

Whitcomb was accepted into the University of Iowa as a graduate assistant in February

1940, where she taught, “elementary courses in acting and the supervision of …the costume department.”17 Whitcomb’s success and experience working with the Oregon

Unit, as well as her personal relationship with Mabie, led to her acceptance into graduate school. She graduated in 1941, writing her thesis on the topic of a University of Iowa production of Robert Sherwood’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois.18 Shortly after her graduation, she returned to Portland.

In her last correspondence in the Mabie archive, written in September 1941,

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Whitcomb was looking for work, with the possibility of going into the “heart of the state”

for a job. Upon her return to Portland, in her attempt to find a job, she continued talking

to the new Dean of the Extension Division of Higher Education in Oregon, Dr. V.V.

Caldwell, who was “intensely interested” in the “therapeutic value to the individual” in

her Grass Roots Theatre idea. Using her experience and relationships gained with the

Oregon Unit, Whitcomb worked between the University of Oregon with the Art Project

to finance her idea, saying, “in the meantime, I find the WPA is very open minded about

a tie-up with the University on such a project.” Exactly how successful Whitcomb was in

the “tie-up,” considering the U.S. entered World War II only a few months after the

correspondence, is a topic for further research, but she was ready and eager to continue

the Grass Roots Theatre idea born from her experience with the Oregon Unit. “But it is

just a beginning and I know it,” she said, “There is so much more I want. Money, money,

money! Why does that and a hoped for career have to interfere with so worthy a project

as more learning?”19 By 1945, Whitcomb moved to Los Angeles to join some of the

actors who had been with the Oregon Unit and began teaching acting at the Geller

Theatre Workshop training World War II veterans on the G.I. Bill.20 Whitcomb’s experiences working with the Oregon Unit transferred directly to the classroom working for the Gellar Theatre Workshop and later in life, for Diablo Valley College in Pleasant

Hill, CA.

Future Areas of Study

I spent much of this study focusing on the volume of performances that occurred in just under four years, coming to know and understand the performance style and type

152 of productions the troupe created. Connecting the political and administrative tensions in

Portland, as well as Whitcomb’s negotiations with the Portland Civic and the University of Oregon created a complex layer within the study that will be understood at a deeper level with future research exploring the politics of Portland. Narrowing the disparate historic elements into a cohesive narrative has forced me to exclude important areas of research.

One of the largest omissions from this study is a feminist reading of Whitcomb’s place as the only woman State Director in the FTP. That Whitcomb was a female administrator in the 1930s was a tremendous achievement, even though I have not analyzed it here. Reading into reports such as that from the FTP Summer Conference, which mentions Whitcomb only once in the entire document (under the cast of characters in the play One-Third of a Nation), gives a sense of her place among the male administrators. In the State of Oregon Whitcomb served with many female state administrators, such as Margery Hoffman Smith, the Assistant State Director of the

Federal Art Project and Gladys Everett, Oregon’s State Director of the Women’s and

Professional Division. I have not endeavored to explore Whitcomb’s administrative position as a woman in the negotiations with the Portland Civic or in her work with E.J.

Griffith at the state level, or how the position of the other women around her in Oregon’s

Federal One or nationally, helped or hindered her progress with the Oregon Unit.

Whitcomb’s letters from the Mabie archives are primary source material that should be scrutinized through a feminist lens. Mabie was Whitcomb’s confidant and the two were friends, but Mabie also held out a possible future for Whitcomb. Looking at Whitcomb’s position as a woman in the male dominated FTP and WPA, and at her relationship with

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Edward Charles (E.C.) Mabie, would give a deeper understanding of the central figure of

the Oregon Unit.

Like many FTP Units across the country, the Oregon Unit was led by a Little

Theatre director and administrator, and tension was created when the vaudeville

performers did not live up to legitimate theatre expectations. Analyzing the work of Little

Theatre leaders in the FTP who had to work with vaudevillians, looking at personal

accounts of attitudes and adjustment in expectations will help develop how common the

problems faced by Whitcomb were, and how her decisions were unique and innovative

among administrators. All of the FTP directors from the Little Theatre Movement were

men, yet many leaders within the movement across the country were women, like the

leaders of the Portland Civic. Whitcomb seemed to adapt and create new works of theatre

at a regular pace with her vaudeville talent, creating works influenced by vaudeville like

Sloping West, Night Beat, and Timberline Tintypes. Could the reason for the vaudeville

problem be tied up in masculine images of what legitimate theatre should look like? If

there were more women in state administrator positions, would they learn to adapt, as

Whitcomb did in Portland?

Whitcomb came up with the idea of smaller units borrowing actors from larger units, which became official FTP policy following the FTP Summer Conference in 1937.

The necessity for this policy came from a perception that the “old-line” vaudevillians

were not good enough to perform in legitimate plays. The FTP had to be more than

entertainment, and since Flanagan wanted quality legitimate art, rehashing “old forms”

made the FTP look dated. The tension created with the FTP’s dismissal of vaudeville

created tension locally with the Oregon Unit, and Whitcomb chose to embrace the

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national vision and move the Unit towards Flanagan’s vision. Borrowing professional

legitimate stage actors from larger units bolstered the Oregon Unit, but was this the case

in other Units? Was the “vaudeville problem” as much of a problem as the

administrators suggested, or did vaudevillians in the FTP help create new ways of

looking at theatre in the United States? Exploring the outcome of other, smaller FTP

Units that relied on a similar number of vaudevillians with a budget the size of the

Oregon Unit, such as New Hampshire and Maine, would help define the vaudeville

“problem” in smaller units and what effect borrowing had on the performances.21

With a load of available talent, the Oregon Unit did not need to borrow dancers or choreographers from larger units. Florence Nelson and Jack Biles choreographed modern dance movements embodying machines building the Bonneville Dam or a flax scutching machine, and children’s theatre performances. The fact that the vaudevillians committed

to their choreography was a testament to their ability. While a section on dance was not offered, both Nelson and Biles were influenced by modern and classic dance of the

1930s. Several vaudeville dancers made up the Unit, including Jane LeSalle and Dan

Feely, with Nelson influenced by the modern dance of Martha Graham, while Biles

choreographed classic ballroom dances, like those found in the films of Fred Astaire and

Ginger Rogers. The two different styles could not be further apart, but Whitcomb had the

ability to incorporate both into the plays, creating a product that the public enjoyed.

Retracing their steps, to look at the movement that inspired their work would give a

deeper sense of the performance style within the narrative description of the plays.

Finally, while this study looked at the change brought about using vaudevillians

in Oregon Unit children’s theatre, it did not look at the implications in the Portland

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theatre community of the vaudevillian’s performances in Pinocchio, Hansel and Gretel

and Alice in Wonderland. The three plays are important because of the shift in attention

by the Oregon Unit and the FTP towards young audiences brought about by Yasha Frank.

The day Congress decided the fate of the FTP, Yasha Frank’s Pinocchio was one of the

last productions presented. In the final performance, in front of a crowded theatre packed

with children, the puppet never came back to life, never became a real boy, and the New

York troupe paraded a miniature coffin through the streets in effigy. The Oregon Unit

was the second company to workshop Frank’s Pinocchio, and innovative advertising

asked children to build the wooden doll themselves to be displayed in the window of a

downtown Portland department store. Similar advertising innovations encouraged

attendance with lollypops distributed at Hansel and Gretel after the show. A local

Oregon Daily Journal newspaper reporter, who was heavily influenced by Whitcomb’s

Alice in Wonderland in the early 1930s Rose Festival celebrations, adapted the play for

the Oregon Unit. Reviews were plentiful and encouraged parents as well as children to

attend the event. Children’s theatre was part of what endeared the Oregon Unit to the

people of Portland.

This study began with the title “Oregon in the American Mind,” but as I worked

through the chapters and worked with my committee, I realized the subject was not about

how Americans perceived Oregon through the Oregon Unit, but rather how the Oregon

Unit helped Oregonians view themselves during tough economic times. Plays rooted in the state of Oregon, about topics that concerned Oregonians were constantly present in the production calendar. Plays like Sloping West placed in Southern Oregon presented

156 backwoods and hillbilly comedy before a Portland audience, while Tapestry in Linen and

The Yellow Harvest performed the story of farming in the Willamette Valley for a Mount

Angel audience and political dignitaries. During the production of Taming of the Shrew

Florence Nelson used the image of manual labor and machines from the Bonneville Dam site to choreograph a dance titled Bonneville Dam. The troupe continued the pantomime and dance before President Roosevelt’s delegation at Timberline Lodge in Dance of the

Flax-Scutching Machines, and Dance of the WPA Worker. The vaudevillians performed at the Lodge creating the melodrama Timberline Tintypes about the Oregon dance hall days, and planned production Paul Bunyan would have created a festival in honor of the mythic hero, centered on Oregon’s chief industry – logging and timber. The topic of

Oregon was a matter of pride not only for Whitcomb, but for the vaudevillians who stayed with the company through its existence.

The productions presented by the Oregon Unit captured the New Deal agenda, and helped define what it meant to be an Oregonian during the Great Depression. The plays were recreating Oregon, from the farmland, to the river, to the forests on Mount

Hood. New Deal labor interacted with the environment, embodied by New Deal vaudevillians. Many of the dances explored the movements of men at work, and recreated the performance of machines, which helped build New Deal monuments that stand today.

Whitcomb’s unique experience working in the theatre in Portland, Oregon, led her to the State Director position with the Oregon Unit. This experience allowed her the opportunity to grapple with personal and professional challenges, from the vaudevillian that had trouble with legitimate drama to the troubling negotiations with former Portland

Civic directors. Her negotiation around and through the conflicts presented by these

157 challenges gave her the ability to create opportunities for herself and for the 55 actors and technicians in the Oregon Unit. Today, Whitcomb needs to be re-centered in the theatrical history of Portland, not merely as the leader of the Bess Whitcomb Players and a director of early productions at the Portland Civic, but for the theatrical magnet and political negotiator that this document suggests. Whitcomb had the ability to work with and adapt the world around her into art. She changed FTP regulations, gave opportunity and a theatrical home for unemployed vaudevillians, represented the WPA in negotiations for an Arts Center in Portland that started a State Theatre conference, and was able to do it all while negotiating the troubled waters of communist allegations against the FTP. The shame is that in her lifetime, historians of the Portland Civic discounted her contribution, while the history of her work with the Oregon Unit was forgotten. Although she lived to be 89 years of age, Whitcomb’s valuable contribution to the arts in Portland was never remembered or acknowledged. My hope is that this study helps bring back her presence, her ghost, among the great theatrical entrepreneurs of Portland who transformed the city’s landscape and its theatrical history.

Notes

1 Marvin A. Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 142.

2 “Dancer killed by Hit-Run Car. Jack Biles, Garden Home, Dies of Injuries,” Oregon Daily Journal, January 2, 1939, 2, 13.

3 “More Show Gossip,” Oregon Sunday Journal, January 8, 1939, 4, 3.

4 Personal interview, Hollywood Distribution, Studio Building. Name withheld to protect the employee. 9/27/2011

5 “Theatre Deal Bringing New Firm to City,” Oregon Daily Journal, July 2, 1939, 2, 1.

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6 “Portland Actors Ensemble,” Portland Actors Ensemble, http://www.portlandactors.com.

7 “Conference Will Concern Theatre”, Oregon Sunday Journal, March 5, 1939, 4, 1.

8 Charles A. Jeszeck. U.S. Government Accountability Office. “Testimony Before the Special Committee on Aging, U.S. Senate. Unemployed Older Workers, Many Face Long-Term Joblessneess and Reduced Retirement Security” 4/15/2012. < http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/590882.pdf> viewed 4/18/2013.

9 George Galup, “Relievers’ Views on Causes of Unemployment,” Oregon Sunday Journal, June 25, 1939, 10

10 “With Stage Folk,” Oregon Daily Journal, November 21, 1937, 4, 1-2, and “Rosalie,” Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029499/ fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast..

11 “Don Porter,” Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/name/ nm0692093/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1.

12 “Reviews,” California Eagle, May 18, 1939, 2B.

13 Whitcomb to Mabie, 21 February 1940, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

14 Whitcomb to Mabie, 21 February 1940, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

15 Whitcomb to Mabie, 21 February 1940, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

16 Whitcomb to Mabie, 16 August 1939, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

17 Mabie to Whitcomb, 27 February 1940, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

159

18 Bess Whitcomb, “An Analysis of the Background and Directing Methods in the Production of Robert Sherwood's Abe Lincoln in Illinois” (master’s thesis, University of Iowa, 1941).

19 Whitcomb to Mabie, 21 September 1941, Papers of Edward C. Mabie, Box 2, “Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, 1936-1941”, RG 99.0188, the University of Iowa Libraries.

20 “Gellar Gossip,” Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1945, C5, and December 16, 1945, B5.

21 Flanagan, Arena, 236-239.

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APPENDIX A

OREGON UNIT OF THE FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT: PERFORMANCE CHRONOLOGY, 1936-39

Date Day Time Production Sponsor Location Source

May 1936 4 “Theater Project in Applications received at Telegram 5/4/36, 6 State” 821 S. W. Fourth Ave.

July 1936 21 Tues 10-acts of Vaudeville Shrine Hospital ODJ 7/22/36, 28

August 1936 3 Mon Vaudeville Peninsula Park ODJ 8/3/36, 22 5 Wed Vaudeville Janzen Beach Park ODJ 8/5/36, 1 5 Wed 8 pm Vaudeville Mt. Tabor Park ODJ 8/5/36, 11 6 Thur Vaudeville National Guard Armory Telegram 8/5/39 2: 9 7 Fri Vaudeville Woodmen Hall Telegram 8/5/39 2: 9 12 Wed 8 pm Vaudeville Columbia Park ODJ 8/12/36, 11 14 Fri Vaudeville Mt. Scott Park ODJ 8/13/36, 13 17 Mon Vaudeville Powell Park ODJ 8/13/36, 13

19 Wed 8 pm Vaudeville Belmont Park ODJ 8/13/36, 13

24 Mon 10 Acts of Vaudeville Duniway Park ODJ 8/13/36, 13

26 Wed 8 pm 8 Acts of Vaudeville Duniway Park ODJ 8/26/36, 17

26 Wed Vaudeville Doernbecher Hospital ODJ 8/13/36, 13

28 Fri 7:30 p 9 Acts of Vaudeville U.S. Grant Bowl ODJ 8/26/36, 17 ODJ 8/13/36, 13

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September 1936 5 Sat The Yellow Harvest Mt. Angel, OR ODJ 8/30/36, 10 Mt. Angel News 7/30/36,1 Mt. Angel News 8/6/36,1 Mt. Angel News 8/13/36,1 Mt. Angel News 8/16/36,5 Mt. Angel News 9/10/36,10 24 Thur 8:30 p New Vaudeville Vancouver Barracks ODJ 9/24/36, 20 program 25 Fri 11 am Hawaiian educational Edison 6-year high ODJ 9/24/36, 20 performance school 25 Fri 8:30 p Vaudeville Benson Polytechnic ODJ 9/24/36, 20

October 1936 9 Thur 8 pm Vaudeville AFof L no. 320 Al Azar Temple Telegram 10/8/36, 10

14 Wed 7:15 p Vaudeville Multnomah Troutdale, OR ODJ 10/14/36, 13 County Home Telegram 10/14/36, 13 15 Thur 9 pm Vaudeville The Elks Old Concordia Club ODJ 10/15/36, 31 “one of 16 booked for the remainder of Oct.” 19 Mon 8:30 p Vaudeville Shrine Auditorium ODJ 10/19/36, 16 20 Tues 2 pm Vaudeville Roosevelt High School ODJ 10/19/36, 16 20 Tues 8 pm Vaudeville Roosevelt High School ODJ 10/19/36, 16 21 Wed 8:30 p Vaudeville Moose Lodge Telegram 10/21/36, 12 22 Thur 8 pm Vaudeville Park Rose Lions Club Telegram 10/21/36, 12 23 Fri 8 pm Vaudeville Hill Military academy Telegram 10/22/36, 12 Telegram 10/23/36, 9 24 Sat 8pm Vaudeville VFW post 1442 Russellville grammer Telegram 10/24/36, 5 school auditorium 26 Mon 8 pm 9 acts of vaudeville Neighborhood South Parkway Club ODJ 10/26/36, 10 with 1-act On the Lot House Telegram 10/26/36, 11 162

27 Tues 8 pm Vaudeville Milwaukie high school ODJ 10/26/36, 10 auditorium Telegram 10/27/36, 11 28 Wed 8:30 p Vaudeville – featuring I.O.O.F. I.O.O.F. Telegram 10/27/36, 11 Palmor & LeSalle ODJ 10/28/36, 14 29 Thurs 8:30p Vaudeville I.O.O.F. I.O.O.F. ODJ 10/28/36, 14 29 Thur 7:30 p Vaudeville – featuring Veterans Hospital ODJ 10/28/36, 14 comedian Hal Kiter Telegram 10/28/36, 15 30 Fri 7:30 p Vaudeville Helen Kelly Manly ODJ 10/25/36, 6 Center Telegram 10/29/36, 11 31 Sat 7:30 p Vaudeville –featuring The Men’s Resort Telegram 10/30/36, 12 WPA puppetry

November 1936 2 Mon 7:30 p Vaudeville W.O.W. Hall ODJ 11/2/36,13

3 Tues 8 pm Vaudeville – featuring W.O.W Hall Telegram 11/3/36, 13 Hope Garner ODJ 11/3/36, 12 4 Wed 8 pm Vaudeville – featuring City Hall, Oregon City Telegram 11/4/36, 13 Lee Grigsby ODJ 11/3/36, 12 5 Thur 9 pm Vaudeville Elks Hall, Oregon City ODJ 11/5/36, 20 6 Fri 8 pm Vaudeville Multnomah grammar ODJ 11/5/36, 20 school 7 Sat Vaudeville Men Resort ODJ 11/5/36, 20 10 Tues 9:30 p “Vaudeville and Al-Azar Temple Telegram 11/10/36, 13 Legitimate acts” 13 Fri 2 pm Vaudeville Holladay school ODJ 11/5/36, 20 13 Fri 8 pm Vaudeville –“new Elliot school Telegram 11/13/36, 15 show in rehearsal” ODJ 11/5/36, 20 14 Sat 8 pm Vaudeville Al-Azar Temple ODJ 11/14/36, 5

17 Tues 9 pm Vaudeville – Matt Anchor Council, W.O.W. Temple Telegram 11/17/36, 11 Howard appointed 746, Security ODJ 11/17/36, 18 musical director Benefit Assoc. 163

18 Wed 7:30 p Vaudeville-featuring Veterans of Norse Hall Telegram 11/18/36, 10 Hawaiian Dance Foreign Wars 19 Thur 8 pm Vaudeville- I.O.O.F. Odd Fellows Hall ODJ 11/19/36, 18 “61st performance Cityview lodge since June” 294 (or 201) 20 Fri 8 pm Vaudeville – “staged YMCA auditorium Telegram 11/20/36, 8 as a carnival” ODJ 11/19/36, 18 23 Mon 9 pm Vaudeville Gul Reazee Masonic Temple ODJ 11/23/36, 10 Grotto 24 Tues 8 pm Hawaiian Act Park Rose Lions Park Rose High Telegram 11/18/36, 10 Telegram 11/24/36, 2:1 24 Tues 9 pm Thanksgiving Sing for Portland Imperial Hotel Telegram 11/24/36, 2:1 Arkansas CCC boys 20/ 30 Club 25 Wed Noon Vaudeville East Side Commercial ODJ 11/25/36, 5 Club 27 Fri 8:15 p Vaudeville Portland League YMCA Social Hall Telegram 11/27/36, 10 28 Sat 8 pm Vaudeville Masonic Home, Forest Telegram 11/27/36, 10 Grove, OR

December 1936 1 Tues WPA Theatre exhibit Central Library ODJ 12/2/36,13 featuring photos 2 Wed 8:30 p Night Beat – Mayor S.E. 39th Ave. Duniway school Telegram 12/2/36, 8 Carson and Milwaukie Improvement ODJ 12/2/36,13 Mayor Sanders speak association 3 Thur 8:45 p Vaudeville – Grads of LaSalle Studio Building – ODJ 12/2/36,13 “Carnival show” University Club, 9th floor 73rd performance Chicago 4 Fri Vaudeville WPA WPA Camp Chapman, ODJ 12/2/36,13 Scappoose, OR 8 Tues 8:15 p 4-acts of Vaudeville B’nai B’rith Center Telegram 12/8/36, 13 and Night Beat ODJ 12/7/36,15 ODJ 12/8/36,16 164

9 Wed 10 am Night Beat St. Helens Hall Telegram 12/8/36, 13 ODJ 12/8/36,16 9 Wed 2:45 p Vaudeville Couch school ODJ 12/8/36,16 11 Fri 2 pm 3 acts of Vaudeville Portland Women’s Club Telegram 12/10/36, 15 and Night Beat ODJ 12/10/36,8 11 Fri 8 pm 3 acts of Vaudeville Brooklyn Community Telegram 12/10/36, 15 and Night Beat Club ODJ 12/10/36,8 “presented daily” 12 Sat 7:30 p Night Beat – “Two a The Men’s Resort ODJ 12/10/36,8 day until Christmas” Telegram 12/11/36, 11 14- Mon- Night Beat Portland schools ODJ 12/10/36,8 18 Fri Telegram 12/10/36, 15 18 Fri 11 am Night Beat Franklin high school ODJ 12/17/36, 23

18 Fri 1:30 p Night Beat Washington high school ODJ 12/17/36, 23

18 Fri 8:30 p Night Beat- Federal Portland Municipal Telegram 12/11/36, 11 One Community Sing Auditorium ODJ 12/15/36, 34 ODJ 12/17/36, 23 18 Fri Night Beat The Men’s Resort Telegram 12/11/36, 11

22 Tues 8:30 p Night Beat Modern Pythian Building ODJ 12/22/36, 12 “Played to 8,000 Woodmen of persons” on the 18th America 23 Wed 8 pm Night Beat Kiwanis Club, ODJ 12/22/36, 12 Oregon City, OR 24 Thur 7 pm Night Beat Masonic and Eastern Star ODJ 12/22/36, 12 Home, Forest Grove, OR

January 1937 8 Fri 8 pm Vaudeville Pulp & Sulphite Vancouver junior high ODJ 1/8/37, 23 Workers, local school 1171 165

9 Sat 8 pm Vaudeville Brotherhood of W.O.W. Hall ODJ 1/8/37, 23 Railway & Steamship Clerks 12 Tues Vaudeville The Breakfast Hotel Portland ODJ 1/11/37, 9 Club “morning meeting” 14 Thurs 8:30 p Vaudeville – The Thurs. YWCA Main Social Hall ODJ 1/14/37, 14 “Portland Civic Actors Evening club added” 15 Fri 8 pm 4 acts of Vaudeville Sabin PTA Sabin schools ODJ 1/8/37, 23 and On the Lot ODJ 1/14/37, 14 16 Sat 9:30 p 4 acts of Vaudeville Oregon White Masonic Temple ODJ 1/14/37, 14 and On the Lot Shrine, no. 1 Commandery Room 30 Sat 1:30 p Sloping West Portland Public Market Telegram 1/30/37, 2 “Hour and a half South Auditorium ODJ 1/28/37, 13 vaudeville show”

February 1937 1-7 Heavy snow cancels Portland Public Market ODJ 2/2/37, 3 Sloping West South Auditorium 8 Mon 1:30 p Sloping West- Portland Public Market Telegram 2/6/37, 10 “plays daily” South Auditorium 9 Tues 1:30 p Sloping West Portland Public Market Telegram 2/9/37, 13 South Auditorium ODJ 2/9/37, 10 10 Wed 1:30 p Sloping West Portland Public Market ODJ 2/9/37, 10

11 Thur 1:30 p Sloping West Portland Public Market ODJ 2/9/37, 10 12 Fri 1:30 p Sloping West Portland Public Market ODJ 2/12/37, 20 15 Mon 1:30 p Sloping West Portland Public Market Telegram 2/15/37, 2 16 Tues 1:30 p Sloping West – “more Portland Public Market Telegram 2/15/37, 2 than 1,500 in South Auditorium attendance last week” 166

17 Wed 1:30 p Sloping West –“feature Portland Public Market ODJ 2/17/37, 11 a one-act play by South Auditorium Arthur Hopkins” 18 Thur 1:30 p “Sloping West” Portland Public Market ODJ 2/17/37, 11 South Auditorium 18 Thur 8 pm Sloping West” Moose Lodge Woodmen Temple ODJ 2/18/37, 13 Portland,no.291 19 Fri 1:30 p Sloping West Portland Public Market ODJ 2/18/37, 11 South Auditorium 20 Sat 1:30 p Sloping West Portland Public Market ODJ 2/18/37, 11 South Auditorium 20 Sat 4 pm Sloping West Portland Public Market ODJ 2/17/37, 11 South Auditorium 22 Mon 2 pm 5 acts of vaudeville Portland Public Market ODJ 2/26/37, 22 South Auditorium Telegram 2/24/37, 11 23 Tues 2 pm 5 acts of vaudeville Portland Public Market ODJ 2/17/37, 11 South Auditorium Telegram 2/24/37, 11 23 Tues Rehearsal for The Viewed by regional ODJ 2/28/37, 4:1,3 Boor director J. Howard Miller 24 Wed 2 pm 5 acts of vaudeville Portland Public Market Telegram 2/24/37, 11 South Auditorium

24 Wed 8:30 p Sloping West Modern Pythian Building – Telegram 2/24/37, 11 Woodmen of 5th floor auditorium America, camp 5466 25 Thurs 2 pm 5 acts of vaudeville Portland Public Market ODJ 2/26/37, 22 South Auditorium 25 Thurs 8 pm Sloping West – Multnomah Woodman Hall Telegram 2/24/37, 11 Will R. Lewis, master Hunters and of cerimonies Anglers club 26 Fri 2 pm 5 acts of vaudeville Portland Public Market ODJ 2/26/37, 22 South Auditorium 167

26 Fri 8 pm Sloping West Hillsboro Old George Hall, ODJ 2/26/37, 22 Moose, no. 247 Hillsboro, OR Telegram 2/23/37, 5

March 1937 5 The Last Mile by In Rehearsal Telegram3/5/37, 11 Wexley, Minie Field Telegram 3/11/37, 14 by Conkle, and The Telegram 3/16/37, 11 Boor by Chekov 12 Fri 8 pm 5 acts of vaudeville- Battin PTA Battin school ODJ 3/12/37, 18 includes On the Lot Telegram 3/11/37, 14 “45th performance” 17 Wed 9 pm Sloping West – The Order of the Lake Theatre in Oswego ODJ 3/17/37, 8 “25th performance” Eastern Star, Telegram 3/16/37, 11 Waluga Masonic Lodge 18 Thurs 3:30 p Sloping West Grout School ODJ 3/17/37, 8 19 Fri 8:30 p Sloping West Webfoot Camp, Woodmen Temple, ODJ 3/19/37, 16 Woodmen of the Hall no. 3 Telegram 3/16/37, 11 World 25 Fri 8 pm Sloping West Vancouver Memorial Building Telegram 3/25/37, 9 Lodge, Loyal Auditorium, Order of the Vancouver, WA Moose

April 1937 2 Fri 8:15 p Sloping West Sellwood Masonic ODJ Temple 8 Thur 9:15 p The Boor The Order of the Lake Theatre in Oswego ODJ Eastern Star, Waluga Masonic Lodge 9 Fri 8:30 p Sloping West Pleasant Valley Pleasant Valley Grange Telegram 4/8/37, 6 PTA

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9 Fri On to Oregon and All In Rehearsal Telegram the Weary People 10 Sat 8:30 p Sloping West Lents Masonic Lodge Telegram 4/8/37, 6 Telegram 4/9/37, 15 15 Thur 8 pm Sloping West St. Agatha Hall ODJ 16 Fri The Boor Oregon Speech Multnomah Hotel ODJ Teachers Convention 23 Fri 8 pm Sloping West Powell Hurst school ODJ 27 Tues 8 pm Sloping West Veterans of Norse Hall ODJ Foreign Wars

May 1937 7 Fri 2 pm The Boor - features Girls Polytechnic school ODJ 5/6/37, 16 Russian Folk Dances 18 Tues 8 pm The Boor – features Lents Masonic Lodge ODJ 5/18/37, 12 Russian Dance and The Royal Hawaiian 5 piece orchestra 21 Fri 8 pm Sloping West-featuring Multnomah Harmony Hall ODJ 5/21/37, 14 The Royal Hawaiians Casting Club 25 Tues 8 pm Sloping West Sandy High school ODJ 5/25/37, 16 26 Wed Sloping West – 50th Ardenwald school ODJ 5/25/37, 16 performance 30 Sun Taming of the Shrew – ODJ 5/30/37, 2 in rehearsal, actor borrowing authorized

June 1937 2 Wed 8 pm The Boor- features Blind Trade School ODJ 6/2/37, 8 Russian Dances by of Oregon Florence Nelson, The Royal Hawaiians 169

17 Thur 8:15 p The Boor - features Capitol Hill Capitol Hill ODJ 6/17/37, 17 Russian Dances, Community Club Community Club Royal Hawaiians and 2 acts of Vaudeville 21 Mon 2 pm Journal Junior Puppet Each Monday through ODJ 6/20/37, 3:1 Class, with instructor Summer. Arthur Wasser 23 Wed 8:15 p The Boor- featuring The Central YMCA ODJ 6/23/37, 18 Wynne and Magwood. auditorium

July 1937 6 Tues 8 pm Taming of the Shrew Laurelhurst Park ODJ 6/13/37, 4:2 7 Wed 8:30 p Taming of the Shrew- Laurelhurst Park ODJ 7/4/37, 4:2 featuring “the ODJ 7/6/37, 16 Raymond Brothers” ODJ 7/7/37, 16 aerial act Telegram 7/7/37, 12* 8 Thurs 8:30 p Taming of the Shrew Laurelhurst Park ODJ 7/4/37, 4:2 9 Fri 8:30 p Taming of the Shrew- Laurelhurst Park ODJ 7/11/37, 4:2* features portable stage and amplified sound 12 Mon 8:30 p Taming of the Shrew Laurelhurst Park ODJ 7/4/37, 4:2 13 Tues 8 pm Taming of the Shrew- Portland Park Laurelhurst Park ODJ 7/7/37, 16 featuring a fencing bureau Telegram 7/13/37, 3 exhibition 14 Wed 8:30 p Taming of the Shrew Laurelhurst Park ODJ 7/4/37, 4:2 15 Thur 8:30 p Taming of the Shrew Laurelhurst Park ODJ 7/4/37, 4:2 August 1937 4 Wed 8:30p New variety show, Grant Park ODJ 8/1/37, 4:3 featuring “Manhattan Serenade” ballroom dance and “mechanical number” Bonneville Dam 170

5 Thur Taming of the Shrew Laurelhurst Park ODJ 8/1/37, 4:3

6 Fri Taming of the Shrew Laurelhurst Park ODJ 8/1/37, 4:3

14 Sat 8:15p Tapestry in Linen Flax Festival Ebner Ballpark, ODJ 8/29/37, 4:2 Mt. Angel, OR Mt. Angel News 8/12/37,1

September 1937 28 Tues Timberline Lodge Timberline Lodge on ODJ 9/19/37, 9 Dedication ceremony. Mt. Hood, “in an ODJ 9/26/37, 1 Dances include All the amphitheatre in the rear ODJ 9/28/37, 4* Weary People, of Timberline Lodge, ODJ 9/29/37, 14 Bonneville Dam, with Mt. Jefferson as a Telegram 9/24/37, 4 Dance of the Flax backdrop for the stage Telegram 9/28/37, 14 Scutching Machines, and Mt. Hood at the Telegram 9/29/37, 5 Indian Celebration, audiences back” The Dance of the Costume changing “in Sophisticates, “Dance rudely constructed rooms commemorating the under the stage” Negro in the WPA, “Dace of the WPA workers” concluded

October 1937 15 Fri 8:15p Taming of the Shrew Joseph Lane Joseph Lane school ODJ 10/14/37, 20 “last summer 10,000 PTA in attendance” 19 Tues 8:30 p The Boor- and Portland Portland Women’s Club ODJ 10/19/37, 15 vaudeville program Women’s Club auditorium 24 Sun The Pursuit of Opens in late November ODJ 10/24/37 4:3 Happiness – five preceding a state tour. borrowed actors from LA Unit

171

November 1937 6 Sat The Boor- “a general Hallie Flanagan Girls Edison High school ODJ 11/6737, 5 talent review visits the Oregon Telegram 11/8/37, 14 13 Sat Pinocchio announced ODJ 11/13/37, 5 to open 12/5. ODJ 11/21/37. 4:1 Yasha Frank assumes direction 21 Sun 8 pm Vaudeville – also Webfoot Camp Westside W.O.W. Hall Telegram 11/25, 10 featured “pictures of no. 65 the war in Spain”

December 1937 12 Sun Welded by O’Neill ODJ 12/12/37, 4:2 announced to open 1/4/38 “Performed in a Blue Room manner” 21 Tues 8 pm Taming of the Shrew Oregon City High school ODJ 11/21/37, 8

January 1938 7 Fri 8:15 p Welded by O’Neill Reed College Reed College Chapel ODJ 11/21/37, 8 ODJ 1/2/38, 4:3 ODJ 1/3/38,11 Telegram 1/7/38, 7 8 Sat 8:15 p Welded by O’Neill, Reed College Reed College Chapel ODJ 1/4/38, 13 extra show due to ODJ 1/5/38, 17 “wide interest” ODJ1/8/38, 5* Telegram 1/7/38, 7 18 Tues 8:30 p Welded by O’Neill Multnomah Hotel Telegram 1/13/38, 6 Junior Ballroom ODJ 1/12/38, 11 ODJ 1/16/38, 4: 1 19 Wed 8:30 p Welded by O’Neill – Multnomah Hotel Telegram 1/13/38, 6 “block tickets sold” Junior Ballroom ODJ 1/13/38, 13

172

20 Thur 8:30 p Welded by O’Neill Multnomah Hotel ODJ 1/14/38, 6 Junior Ballroom ODJ 1/15/38, 5 21 Fri 8:30 p Welded by O’Neill Multnomah Hotel Telegram 1/13/38, 6 Junior Ballroom

February 1938 4 Fri Dinner Gala Performance, WPA Timberline Lodge, ODJ2/6/38, 3 “tone poem song and Mount Hood dance” and the Royal Hawaiians 11 Fri 8 pm Here You Are – Collins View Collins View school ODJ 2/11/38, 14 vaudeville PTA 16 Tues 8:30 p The Pursuit of Benson Polytechnic ODJ 2/16/38, 12* Happiness – preview Auditorium 17 Thur 8:30 p The Pursuit of Benson Polytechnic ODJ 1/30/38, 4: 1 Happiness Auditorium Telegram 2/11/38, 5 Telegram 2/14/38, 5 18 Fri 8:30 p The Pursuit of Benson Polytechnic Telegram 2/18/38, 11 Happiness Auditorium ODJ 2/12/38, 5 ODJ 2/18/38, 11 19 Sat 2:30 p The Pursuit of Benson Polytechnic Telegram2/16/38, 6 Happiness Auditorium ODJ 2/6/38, 4:1 19 Sat 8:30 p The Pursuit of Benson Polytechnic ODJ 2/13/38, 4:1 Happiness Auditorium ODJ 2/15/38, 8 ODJ 2/19/38, 5 23 Wed Here You Are – Gladstone Fire Gladstone school ODJ 2/22/38, 12 vaudeville, benefit for Department gymnasium fire equiptment 24 Thur eve Here You Are – Tigard and Tigard Union ODJ 2/23/38, 13 vaudeville, “a Durham school High school Telegram 2/22/38, 12 company of 25” PTA benefit for Durham school hot lunches

173

March 1938 5 Sat Mat Here You Are – Marshfield Lions The Armory in ODJ 3/3/38, 15 vaudeville – Club Marshfield 5 Sat Eve Here You Are – Marshfield Lions The Armory in ODJ 3/3/38, 15 vaudeville Club Marshfield The (Marshfield) Sun bus tour of Oregon, 35 3/10/38, 3 members in leave in a Southwestern OR News “sleek bannered bus” 3/4/38, 4 3/11/38, 2 26 Sat 8:30 p Power Benson Polytechnic ODJ 3/6/38, 4:1-2 Auditorium ODJ 3/20/38, 4:1 ODJ 3/25/38, 5* Telegram 3/12/38, 11 Telegram 3/21/38, 6 Telegram 3/23/38, 12 Telegram 3/26/38, 11 Oregonian 3/22/38, 4 Oregonian 3/24/38, 4 27 Sun 8:30 p Power= Benson Polytechnic ODJ 3/13/38, 4:1 “25 piece orchestra Auditorium ODJ 3/21/38, 15 and a cast of 55 ODJ 3/24/38, 10 actors” Telegram 3/21/38, 6 Telegram 3/25/38, 11 Oregonian 3/23/38, 4 Oregonian 3/26/38, 4*

April 1938 1 Fri 8 pm Here You Are – Tualatin High Tualatin Grade school ODJ 4/1/38, 8 vaudeville, “carnival school student auditorium spirit of April Fools” body 5 Tues Here You Are – Vestal PTA Vestal School ODJ 4/5/38, 6 vaudeville Auditorium

174

22 Fri The Pursuit of Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 4/10/ 38, 4:2 Happiness 29 Fri Here You Are – “the St. Helens St. Helens ODJ 4/17/38, 4:3 vaudeville unit” American St. Helens Sentinel Mist Legion 4/29/38, 1 5/6/38, 1

May 1938 3 Tues 8:30 p The Pursuit of Reed College Reed College Commons ODJ 4/24/38, 4: 2 Happiness Players ODJ 4/28/38, 10 Telegram 4/30/38, 11 4 Wed 8:30 p The Pursuit of Reed College Reed College Commons ODJ 4/17/38, 4:3 Happiness Players ODJ 4/24/38, 4: 2 Oregonian 4/17/38, 2 5 Thur 8:30 p The Pursuit of Reed College Reed College Commons ODJ 4/17/38, 4:3 Happiness Players Oregonian 4/17/38, 2

12 Thur 8:30 p The Pursuit of Canadian Legion Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 4/10/38, 2 Happiness Post no. 17 ODJ 5/8/38, 4: 2

12 Thur Here You Are – Columbia Post St. Helens Junior High St Helens Sentinel Mist vaudeville, benefit for no. 42, American School 4/29/38,1 St. Helens Junior Legion 5/6/38, 1 baseball team 13 Fri 8:30 p The Pursuit of Canadian Legion Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 5/11/38, 10 Happiness- Post no. 17 Grand Opening Telegram 5/13/38, 11 performance by ODJ 4/17/38, 4:3 Canadian Legion Pipe Oregonian 4/17/38, 2 Band before show. 14 Sat 8:30 p “The Pursuit of Canadian Legion Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/14/38, 5 Happiness Post no. 17 15 Sun 2 pm The Pursuit of Canadian Legion Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/15/38, 4:1 Happiness Post no. 17

175

15 Sun 8:30 p The Pursuit of Canadian Legion Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/15/38, 4:1 Happiness Post no. 17 20 Fri 8 pm Here You Are – Scappoose Union High Telegram 5/19/38, 13 10 act vaudeville St Helens Mist 5/13/38, 5 St Helens Mist 5/27/38, 5 ODJ 5/18?38, 13 21 Sat 2pm - 10 acts of continuous Highway Theatre Telegram 5/19/38, 13 11:30p vaudeville w/ the film Telegram 5/21/38, 11 Ali Baba Goes to ODJ 5/19/38, 13 Town staring Cantor 21 Sat 10 am Marionette Show – Auditorium of the ODJ 4/17/38, 4:3 The Adventures of Central Library Telegram 5/20/38, 5 Snicklepuss “given to advertise the Pinocchio contest” 22 Sun 1 pm- 10 acts of continuous Highway Theatre Telegram 5/23/38, 6 (Ad) 11:30p vaudeville w/ the film ODJ 5/22/38, 4:2 (Ad) Ali Baba Goes to Town staring Cantor 23 Mon 1 pm- 10 acts of continuous Highway Theatre Telegram 5/20/38, 5 11:30p vaudeville w/ the film Ali Baba Goes to Town staring Cantor 24 Tues 1 pm- 10 acts of continuous Highway Theatre Telegram 5/20/38, 5 11:30p vaudeville w/ the film Ali Baba Goes to Town staring Cantor 26 Thurs 8:30 p Counselor at Law Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 5/26/38, 6 ODJ 5/22/38, 4:3 ODJ 5/23/38, 9 27 Fri 8:30 p Counselor at Law Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 5/27/38,5 (Ad) ODJ 5/27/38, 6 ODJ 2/25/38, 15

176

28 Sat 8:30 p Counselor at Law Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/28/38, 5 29 Sun 2 pm Counselor at Law Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/29/38, 4:2

June 1938 4 Sat 10:30a The Adventures of Laurelhurst Park Telegram Snicklepuss – Marionette show 12 Sun 2 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram6/7/38, 10 ODJ 6/6/38, 13 ODJ 6/7/38, 14 ODJ 6/8/38, 6 ODJ 6/9/38, 14 ODJ 6/10/38, 8 ODJ 6/11/38, 5 12 Sun 8 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 6/11/38, 13 ODJ 6/12/38, 4:1 13 Mon 8 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 6/13/38, 10 ODJ 6/13/38, 15 14 Tues 8 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram6/9/38, 6 ODJ 6/14/38, 15 15 Wed 2 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 6/15/38, 13 15 Wed 8 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 6/15/38, 13 16 Thur 8 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 6/16/38, 20 17 Fri 8 pm Pinocchio- winner of Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 6/17/38, 5 Pinocchio carving ODJ 6/17/38, 6 contest announced 18 Sat 2pm Pinocchio –“seeks to Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 6/18/38, 11 become a boy by ODJ 6/18/38, 5 overcoming greed” 18 Sat 8 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 6/18/38, 5

19 Sun 2 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 6/18/38, 5

177

23 Thurs 6:30 p Puppets in the Park Woodstock Park Telegram 6/21/38, 5 The Adventures of Snicklepuss 24 Fri 2 pm Puppets in the Park Irving Park Telegram 6/21/38, 5 The Adventures of Snicklepuss 25 Sat 10 am Pinocchio- Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 6/23/38, 16 “Presented every Sat. ODJ 6/24/38, 13 except when regular Telegram 6/23/38, 6 run shows have mat.” Telegram 6/24/38, 11 Telegram 6/24/38, 13* Telegram 6/25/38, 13* Telegram 6/26/38, 13* 29 Wed 2 pm Puppets in the Park Wallace Park Telegram 6/233/38, 5 The Adventures of Snicklepuss 29 Wed 8:30 p Pinocchio Reed College ODJ 6/26/38, 4:2-3 amphitheatre ODJ 6/28/38, 14 ODJ 6/29/38, 13 Telegram 6/21/38, 10 Telegram 6/25/38, 11 30 Thur 8:30 p Pinocchio Reed College ODJ 6/30/38, 20 amphitheatre Telegram 6/27/38, 5 Telegram 6/28/38, 5 Telegram 6/30/38, 11

July 1938 1 Fri 8:30 p Pinocchio Reed College Telegram 6/29/38, 10 amphitheatre 2 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 6/23/38, 10 6 Wed 2 pm Puppets in the Park – Belmont Park Telegram 6/21/38, 5 The Adventures of Snicklepuss

178

8 Fri 2 pm Puppets in the Park Columbia Park Telegram 6/21/38, 5 The Adventures of Snicklepuss 9 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 7/7/38, 7 11 Mon 8 pm Hansel and Gretel- Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 7/8/38, 4 featuring song “the ODJ 7/9/38, 5 Sandman duet” Telegram 7/7/38, 7 Telegram 7/8/38, 5 Telegram 7/9/38, 11 Telegram 7/11/38, 11 12 Tues 8 pm Hansel and Gretel – Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 7/12/ 38, 5 “Scenic effects ODJ 7/12/38, 6* are…attractive” 13 Wed 2 pm Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 7/13/38, 6 ODJ 7/13/38, 13 13 Wed 8 pm Hansel and Gretel- Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 7/14/38, 6 lollypops give away from the stage. 14 Thurs 8 pm Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 7/14/38, 19 15 Fri 2 pm Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 7/15/38, 5

15 Fri 8 pm Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 7/15/38, 12 16 Sat 2 pm Hansel and Gretel= Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 7/16/38, 5 “auditorium is air conditioned” 16 Sat 8 pm Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 7/16/38, 5 17 Sun 2 pm Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 7/16/38, 5 18 Mon 2 pm Puppets in the Park Powell Park Telegram 6/21/38, 5 The Adventures of Snicklepuss 20 Wed 2 pm Puppets in the Park Mt. Scott Park Telegram 6/21/38, 5 The Adventures of Snicklepuss 179

23 Sat 10 am Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 7/22/38, 8 25 Mon 2 pm Puppets in the Park Rose City Park Telegram 6/21/38, 5 The Adventures of Snicklepuss 27 Wed 2 pm Puppets in the Park Couch School Telegram 6/21/38, 5 The Adventures of Snicklepuss 30 Sat 10 am Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 7/29/38, 5 ODJ 7/28/38, 10 31 Sun 10 pm Actors Club ODJ 7/31/38, 4:2 “jam session”

August 1938 6 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 7/29/38, 5 12 Fri 8:30 p Timberline Tintypes Triangle Milling Timberline Lodge ODJ 8/7/38, 4:3 Company ODJ 8/9/38, 4 Telegram 8/3/38, 5 Telegram 8/10/38,6 13 Sat 10am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 8/11/38, 14 Telegram 7/29/38, 5 Telegram 8/11/38, 6 13 Sat 8 pm Flaxville vaudeville – Mt. Angel Flax ODJ 8/12/38, 2:17 14 acts of vaudeville Festival Telegram 8/3/38, 3 Telegram 8/11/38, 5 19 Fri 8:30 p Timberline Tintypes Timberline Lodge Telegram 8/10/38,6 20 Sat 10 am Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 8/18/38, 4 Telegram 8/18/38, 6 Telegram 8/19/38, 5 24 Wed 8:30 p Timberline Tintypes- Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 8/21/38, 4:3 “played to capacity ODJ 8/22/38, 10 audiences at Telegram 8/20/38, 11 Timberline Lodge” Telegram 8/22/38, 6 Telegram 8/24/38, 10 180

25 Thurs 8:30 p Timberline Tintypes – Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 8/25/38, 10 “two stages with Telegram 8/25/38, 6* simultaneous action” 26 Fri 8:30 p Timberline Tintypes – Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 8/26/38, 11 “pancake eating contest” 27 Sat 10 am Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 8/25/38, 16 Telegram 8/27/38, 11 27 Sat 8:30 p Timberline Tintypes Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 8/27/38, 5 Telegram 8/20/38, 11 31 Wed Marionette Show Young Democratic Headquarters ODJ accompanied by the Democrats Royal Hawaiians

September 1938 1 Thurs 8:30 p Timberline Tintypes Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 9/1/38, 18 2 Fri 8:30 p Timberline Tintypes Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 9/2/38, 10 3 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 9/1/38, 18 Telegram 9/2/38, 10 3 Sat 8:30 p Timberline Tintypes Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 9/3/38, 5 Telegram 9/3/38, 11 9 Fri Timberline Lodge Timberline Lodge ODJ 9/9/38, 4 Amphitheatre dedication 10 Sat 10 am Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 9/8/38, 6 Telegram 9/9/38, 11 ODJ 9/8/38, 16 ODJ 9/10/38, 9 12 Mon 8 pm Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 9/8/38, 6 ODJ 9/11/38, 4:1-2 ODJ 9/12/38, 13 13 Tues 8 pm Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 9/13/38, 5 14 Wed 8 pm Hansel and Gretel Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 9/14/38, 12 181

15 Thurs 8 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 9/8/38, 6 16 Fri 8 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 9/9/38, 11 17 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 9/8/38, 6 ODJ 9/16/38, 16 17 Sat 8 pm Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 18 Sun 2:30 p Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 9/8/38, 6

October 1938 15 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 10/ 14/ 38, 10 17 Mon 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Young Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 9/25/38, 4:2 Democrats of ODJ 10/ 2/ 38, 4: 1-2 Multnomah ODJ 10/ 9/ 38, 4: 1-2 County ODJ 10/ 14/ 38, 10 ODJ 10/ 15/ 38, 5 ODJ 10/ 16/ 38, 4:3 ODJ 10/ 17 38, 6 Telegram 9/26/38, 5 Telegram 10/13/38, 11 Telegram 10/ 15/ 38, 11 18 Tues 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 10/ 18/ 38, 6* Telegram 10/18/38, 10* 19 Wed 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 10/19/38, 6 “twelve Portland organizations have booked sponsorships” 20 Thur 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Portland Youth Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 10/ 20/ 38, 19 “Youth Night” Council, Jewish Telegram 10/20/38, 6 Youth council, Negro Youth Council, YWCA, Reed College American Students Union

182

21 Fri 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Portland Youth Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 10/ 21/ 38, 18 “Youth Night” Council, Jewish Telegram 10/21/38, 11 Youth council, Negro Youth Council, YWCA, Reed College American Students Union 22 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 10/21/38, 11 22 Sat 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Office Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 10/ 23/ 38, 4:3 Employees Telegram 10/22/38, 11 Union 24 Mon 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 10/22/38, 11 25 Tues 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Business and Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 10/ 25/ 38, 15 Professional Telegram 10/25/38, 9 Women of the First Congregational Church 26 Wed 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Business and Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 10/ 26/ 38, 13 Professional Telegram 10/26/38, 10 Women of the First Congregational Church 27 Thurs 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Cultural and Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 10/27/38, 14 Professional Workers Union 28 Fri 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Iron, Steel and Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 10/ 28/ 38, 6 Tin Workers Telegram 10/28/38, 5 Union 29 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 10/ 28/ 38, 6

183

29 Sat 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation NAACP Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 10/ 29/ 38, 5 features “Negro Telegram 10/29/38, 5 Housing Scene” 31 Mon 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 10/ 30/ 38, 4:1 ODJ 10/31/38, 6 Telegram 10/231/38, 7

November 1938 1 Tues 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/1/38, 12 2 Wed 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/2/38, 17 Telegram 11/2/38, 6 3 Thurs 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/3/38, 17 Telegram 11/3/38, 13 4 Fri 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation International Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/4/38, 18 Woodworkers of Telegram 11/4/38,8 America 5 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/4/38, 18 Telegram 11/4/38,8 5 Sat 8:30 p One-Third of a Nation ILWU Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/5/38, 5

6 Sun 1:30 p One-Third of a Nation Northwest Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/6/38, 4:1-2 Conference of the YMCA 12 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/12/38, 12 Telegram 11/11/38, 11 26 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/12/38, 12 Telegram 11/25/38, 4

December 1938 1 Thurs Oregon Unit Theatre Guild, ODJ employees help Turn Verein auditorium Theatre Guild with a production of Rain 184

3 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 12/2/38, 17 Telegram 12/2/38, 11 10 Sat 10 am Pinocchio Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/9/38, 8 Telegram 12/9/38, 5 17 Sat 10 am Pinocchio- “food and Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/16/38, 12 toys accepted as Telegram 12/16/38, 7 admission for Toys and Joy Makers” 18 Sun Oregon Unit featured Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 11/25/38, 4:3 at Actor’s Club “frolic” 22 Thurs Elks Temple building Telegram code violations 26 Mon 8 pm Alice in Wonderland Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 12/12/38, 11 by Dean Collins, Telegram 12/23/38, 5 original music by Matt Telegram 12/24/38, 5 Howard and dance Telegram 12/26/38, 7 numbers by Jack Biles ODJ 12/11/38, 4:2 ODJ 12/18/38, 4:1-3 ODJ 12/23/38, 8 ODJ 12/24/38, 6 ODJ 12/25/38, 4:3 ODJ 12/26/38, 6 27 Tues 8 pm Alice in Wonderland- Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 12/27/38, 5* “cast of 40 actors” ODJ 12/23/38, 8 28 Wed 2:30 p Alice in Wonderland Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 12/27/38, 6

28 Wed 8 pm Alice in Wonderland Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 12/28/38, 11

29 Thurs 2:30 p Alice in Wonderland Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 12/29/38, 6 29 Thurs 8 pm Alice in Wonderland Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 12/29/38, 6 30 Fri 2:30 p Alice in Wonderland Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 12/30/38, 4 30 Fri 8 pm Alice in Wonderland Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 12/30/38, 4 185

31 Sat 2:30 p Alice in Wonderland Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 12/30/38, 4 31 Sat Actors Club New The Actor’s Club ODJ 12/30/38, 4 Years Eve Frolic featuring Oregon Unit 10 acts of vaudeville, Jack Biles, M.C. 31 Sat 6:30p Jack Biles hit and run ODJ 1/2/39, 2:13 Dies 1:47 am

January 1939 4 Wed Tribute to Jack Biles The Chapel ODJ 1/3/39, 20 ODJ 1/8/1939, 4:3 7 Sat 2:30 p Alice in Wonderland – Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 1/5/39, 13 “to accommodate Telegram 1/6/39, 2:1 those who missed the ODJ 1/6/39, 12 show due to sell-out” 14 Sat 2:30 p Alice in Wonderland Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 1/12/39, 12 and concert by Royal Telegram 1/13/39, 5 Hawaiian Orchestra ODJ 1/13/39,6 18 Wed WPA approval for Telegram1/18/39, 11 $620,000 Art Center. ODJ 1/17/39, 1 29 Sun 8:30 p Prologue to Glory Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 12/12/38, 11 Telegram 1/26/39, 2:1 Telegram 1/27/39, 7 Telegram 1/28/39, 5 ODJ 1/1/39, 4:1 ODJ 1/8/39, 4:1 ODJ 1/15/39,4:1 ODJ 1/22/39, 4:3 ODJ 1/28/39,6 ODJ 1/29/39,4:1 30 Mon 8:30 p Prologue to Glory Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 1/30/39, 9* ODJ 1/30/39, 5*

186

31 Tues 8:30 p Prologue to Glory Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 1/31/39, 7 ODJ 1/31/39, 11

February 1939 1 Wed 8:30 p Prologue to Glory Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 2/1/39, 6 Telegram 2/1/39, 3 (Ad) 2 Thurs 8:30 p Prologue to Glory Elks Temple Theatre Telegram ODJ 3 Fri 8:30 p Prologue to Glory Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 2/3/39, 4 Telegram 2/3/39, 5 4 Sat 8:30 p Prologue to Glory Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 2/4/39, 11 5 Sun 8:30 p Prologue to Glory Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 2/5/39, 4:2 11 Sat 8:30 p Prologue to Glory The Cultural and Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 2/11/39, 6 celebration of Professional Telegram 2/10/39, 7 Lincoln’s Birthday Workers Union 12 Sun 8:30 p Prologue to Glor Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 2/12/39, 4:1 26 Sun 8 pm Spirochete- The Oregon Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 12/12/38, 11 “play is set on two State Medical Telegram 2/23/39, 13 levels and action Association Telegram 2/24/39, 13 flashes from one scene Telegram 2/25/39, 5 to another in rapid ODJ 2/19/39, 4:1 order” ODJ 2/23/39, 8 ODJ 2/25/39, 6 ODJ 2/26/39, 4:1 27 Mon 8 pm Spirochete Oregon Social Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 2/27/39, 6 Hygiene Telegram 2/27/39, 11* association, Visiting Nurse Association 28 Tues 8 pm Spirochete – Dr. Adolph Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 2/28/39, 12 “over 40 professional Weinziri, Telegram 2/28/39, 5 actors. Portland health officer

187

March 1939 1 Wed 8:30 p Spirochete – Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 3/1/39, 11 “endorsed by the ODJ 3/1/39, 6 Oregon State Medical association” 2 Thur 8:30 p Spirochete Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 3/2/39, 13 ODJ 3/2/39, 10 3 Fri 8:30 p Spirochete – Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 3/3/39, 2:1 “members of the cast ODJ 3/3/39, 16 given blood tests… ODJ 3/3/39, 36 practice what they “preach” 4 Sat 8:30 p Spirochete – Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 3/4/39, 5 “held over” ODJ 3/4/39, 6 5 Sun 8:30 p Spirochete Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 3/5/39, 4:1 6 Mon 8:30 p Spirochete Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 3/6/39, 11 ODJ 3/6/39, 11 7 Tues 8:30 p Spirochete Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 3/7/39, 11 ODJ 3/7/39, 13 8 Wed 8:30 p Spirochete Young Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 3/8/39, 9 Democrats of ODJ 3/8/39, 13 Multnomah County 9 Thur 8:30 p Spirochete = “not Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 3/9/39, 13 recommended for ODJ 3/9/39, 17 children under 16” 10 Fri 8:30 p Spirochete Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 3/10/39, 9

11 Sat 8:30 p Spirochete Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 3/10/39, 9

12 Sun The Actor’s Club jam Private Party – ODJ3/19/39, 4:2 session Location not disclosed 188

April 1939 5 Wed Night Must Fall – Critics preview – Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/4/39, 3 “hope that the critics invitation only ODJ 4/4/39, 6 form the nucleus of an ODJ 4/5/39, 14 informal advisory board.” 6 Thur 8:30 p Night Must Fall Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/3/39, 13 Telegram 4/6/39, 13 ODJ 3/26/39, 4: 1 ODJ 4/2/39, 4: 1 ODJ 4/3/39, 12 ODJ 4/6/39, 14* 7 Fri 8:30 p Night Must Fall Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/6739, 5 (Ad) ODJ 4/7/39, 14 8 Sat 8:30 p Night Must Fall Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/8/39, 11 ODJ 4/8/39, 6 13 Thur 8:30 p Night Must Fall – Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/12/39, 11 “children in arms will Telegram 4/13/39, 11 not be admitted” ODJ 4/9/39, 4:1 ODJ 4/12/39, 17 ODJ 4/13/39, 21 14 Fri 8:30 p Night Must Fall Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/14/39, 11 (Ad) ODJ 4/14/39, 16 15 Sat 8:30 p Night Must Fall Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/15/39, 11 ODJ 4/15/39, 6 20 Thurs 8:30 p Night Must Fall with Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/20/39, 13 marionette vaudeville ODJ 4/16/39, 4:3 for children ODJ 4/19/39, 6 21 Fri 8:30 p Night Must Fall Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/21/39, 11 (Ad) 22 Sat 8:30 p Night Must Fall with Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/22/39, 11 marionette vaudeville ODJ 4/22/39, 6 for children

189

27 Thurs 8:30 p Night Must Fall Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/27/39, 13 ODJ 4/23/39, 4:1 ODJ 4/26/39, 18 ODJ 4/27/39, 14 28 Fri 8:30 p Night Must Fall Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 4/28/39, 17 29 Sat 8:30 p Night Must Fall Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 4/28/39, 17

May 1939 3 Wed The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 4/22/39, 11 Telegram 5/1/39, 11 ODJ 5/1/39, 9 ODJ 5/3/39, 15 4 Thur The Milky Way – Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 5/4/39, 13 “round of curtain calls ODJ 5/4/39, 15* greeted… final scene” 5 Fri The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 5/4/39, 13

6 Sat The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/6/39, 6

11 Thurs The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/7/39, 4:1 ODJ 5/10/39, 13 12 Fri The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/7/39, 4:1

13 Sat The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 5/13/39, 11 ODJ 5/13/39, 6

18 Thurs The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 5/17/39, 13 Telegram 5/18/39, 13 ODJ 5/14/39, 4:1 ODJ 5/17/39, 15 ODJ 5/18/39, 16 19 Fri The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/19/39, 14

190

20 Sat The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre Telegram 5/20/39, 11 ODJ 5/20/39, 8 25 Thurs The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/21/39, 4:1 ODJ 5/4/39, 8 ODJ 5/25/39, 17 26 Fri The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/4/39, 8

27 Sat The Milky Way Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 5/27/39, 8

June 1939 4 8:30 p Both Your Houses by Elks Temple Theatre ODJ 6/4/39, 4:1 Maxwell Anderson Scheduled for six announced to open weekend run. June 22. Direction by Whitcomb and Show never opens. Frederic Murray. 14 Wed Telegram sent to Sponsored by 40 . ODJ 6/18/39, 6 Oregon congressmen prominent Telegram 6/19/39, 2:1 asking them to not end citizens from WPA arts projects politics to the business community 26 Mon ODJ Editor, P.L. ODJ 6/26/39, 9 Jackson, writes a letter of support for the FTP.

July 1939 1 Sat Federal Theatre ODJ 7/1/39, 1,3 abolished Telegram 7/1/39, 1-2 Telegram 7/4/39, 5

191

6 Thurs WPA workers strike in Telegram 7/6/39, 1 Lewis County, WA to Telegram 7/7/39, 1 protest cuts in the Telegram 7/8/39, 1 program. Strike Telegram 7/10/39, 1 spreads across U.S.. Telegram 7/11/39, 1-2 300,000 WPA workers Telegram 7/12/39, 1-2 cut from relief rolls. Telegram 7/13/39, 1-3 Telegram 7/14/39, 1-2 Telegram 7/17/39, 1-2

192

APPENDIX B

OREGON UNIT PERSONNEL

Name Skill Featured Performances

Al Adams clown, marionettes Shrew, Punch and Judy show, One-third of a Nation

Margaret Barney director, publicity, actor Timberline Tintypes, 1/3 of a Nation, Alice, Night Must Fall

James Beard costume design (& chef) Taming of the Shrew Radio personality, Director for Portland Neighborhood House, 1936

Louise Beck actor One-third of a Nation, Alice, Prologue to Glory, Spirochete

Jack Biles choreographer, dancer, actor One-third of a Nation, Alice in Wonderland

Julia Boroski actor Prologue to Glory

Edward C. Bowen booking agent

Maxene Bowles actor Timberline Tintypes, One-third of a Nation, Hansel &Gretel

Alma Bunzell loan actor (L.A.,11/38) Prologue to Glory, Night Must Fall

Don Burbank actor The Milky Way

Stanley Burroughs actor One-third of a Nation

193

Bud Crabtree actor One-third of a Nation

Earnest Carrier strongman Here You Are

Dean Collins Playwright ( Portland- ODJ) Alice in Wonderland

Rowen Crawford Business Manager

Bernice Davison actor One-third of a Nation

John Dawson loan actor (L.A., 11/38) Spirochete, Night Must Fall, The Milky Way

Eleanor Debellis actor One-third of a Nation

Dan Feely dancer, lariat Sloping West, Shrew, Power, Pinocchio, One-third of a Nation

Yasha Frank writer, director Pinocchio, Hansel and Gretel

Leon Forbes loan actor, director(San Fran 1/39) ) Prologue to Glory, Spirochete, Night Must Fall, Milky Way

Hope Garner singer under Irving Berlin Taming of the Shrew, One-third of a Nation, Night Must Fall

“Lullaby” Lee Grigsby “Negro baritone” Night Beat, Sloping West, Taming of the Shrew

John Groves actor Timberline Tintypes, The Milky Way, One-third of a Nation

Janette Gump actor One-third of a Nation

Ted Harold whistler Taming of the Shrew, Power, 1/3 of a Nation, The Milky Way

Clarence M. Heath singer – baritone The Boor, One-third of a Nation, The Milky Way

Frank Heminway assistant to Whitcomb, actor One-third of a Nation

194

Boyd Homewood assistant to Whitcomb (actor with Portland Civic) One-third of a Nation, Sloping West

Matt Howard conductor, composer(11/36) Alice in Wonderland original score

Barbara James Portland actor On the Lot

Oscar Johnson juggler (Larson & Johnson) One-third of a Nation

Joe Kemper actor (L.A. loan, 12/37) Power, The Pursuit of Happiness

Hal Kiter comedian Here You Are, One-third of a Nation

Tom Kneeland lighting (Portland Civic) Sloping West

Lelah Landon actor Timberline Tintypes

Theo Larson juggler (Larson& Johnson) One-third of a Nation

Jane LeSalle dancer (Palmor & LeSalle) Shrew, Pursuit, Alice, Prologue to Glory, The Milky Way

Herbert Lewis African American actor. Volunteer from NAACP for “Negro Housing Scene” in 1/3 of a Nation

William Logan actor One-third of a Nation

Warren Magwood (Philip Warren) Portland Civic actor Taming of the Shrew, Sloping West (leaves for Hollywood 10/37)

Peter Marroney Stage design Taming of the Shrew (portable stage)

Laura McClure actor One-third of a Nation

Roberta McCracken actor One-third of a Nation

Harold (Harry) Miles actor (Portland Civic) Taming of the Shrew, One-third of a Nation, Alice, Pursuit

195

Fred Miller loan actor (L.A., 12/37) Welded, Power, The Pursuit of Happiness

Mason Moltzner actor (from Portland) Power, One-third of a Nation, Timberline Tintypes

E. Carol Moran actor One-third of a Nation

Frederic Murray loan actor (L.A., 11/38) Spirochete, Alice, Night Must Fall, The Milky Way

Florence Nelson choreographer Russian Ballet for The Boor, Dance of the Flax Scutching Machine

Pat O’Hara loan actor (L.A. 11/38) Alice in Wonderland, Spirochete

Harold Ormston Prod. Manager (L.A. loan) Power, The Pursuit of Happiness

John Palmor dancer (Palmor & LeSalle) Alice in Wonderland, One-third of a Nation, Pursuit of Happiness

Virginia Parker actor One-third of a Nation

Micha Pelz conductor (7/36 – 11/36) returned to conduct orchestra for Power

Don Porter actor (Portland Civic) Welded, Taming of the Shrew, The Pursuit of Happiness

Jack Price set designer Spirochete

Louigi Ragan accordionist One-third of a Nation

“The Raymond Brothers” Ariel act on trapeze and high wire

Walter Reynolds African American actor. Volunteer from NAACP for “Negro Housing Scene” in 1/3 of a Nation

Frank Robinson actor One-third of a Nation

Louise Rohets actor Night Must Fall

196

May Ross costume design Spirochete

Deon Routh One-third of a Nation

Louise Christian Routh actor (from Portland) Power

“Royal Hawaiians” Hawaiian musicians, names unknown.

Bruce Savon youth actor Alice in Wonderland

Bruce Showler actor One-third of a Nation

Harry Summerkamp Director of stage crew Taming of the Shrew

Mae Stabell loan actor (L.A , 12/37) Welded, Power, The Pursuit of Happiness

Corbett Sutton actor One-third of a Nation

Douglas Sutton actor One-third of a Nation

Juanita Wagner actor One-third of a Nation, Prologue to Glory

Sallie Wagner actor One-third of a Nation

Jack Walker actor One-third of a Nation

Arthur Wasser Puppeteer, actor Pinocchio, The Adventures of Snicklepuss, Power, Prologue

Walter Weaver loan actor (L.A., 12/37) Power, The Pursuit of Happiness

Paul Weiss actor One-third of a Nation, The Milky Way

George Wilhelm Assistant director Vaudeville performances in 1936

197

Guy Williams Assistant Executive Director (12/’38)

Bess Whitcomb State Director

Walter Winslow juvenile actor (L.A. 12/37) The Pursuit of Happiness

Louis Wood Loan actor (L.A., 11/38) Prologue to Glory

Gale Woodworth Actor (w/ Portland Civic) On the Lot, Sloping West Worked in Hollywood

Madge Wynne legitimate theatre Taming of the Shrew, Timberline Tintypes, Welded, Alice

Paul Zaremba loan actor (Kansas City) Pursuit of Happiness, Timberline Tintypes, Power, 1/3 of a Nation

198

APPENDIX C

OREGON UNIT PERFORMANCE LOCATIONS

Location Name Address

The Actor’s Club 531 SW Park Avenue

Al Azar Temple SW 3rd and Columbia

Almeda Park Community Church NE 31st and Mason

Battin school SE Johnson Creek Road and 82nd Street

Belmont Park 20th and Belmont

Benson Polytechnic 546 NE 12th Avenue

Blind Trades school of Oregon 8435 NE Glisan

B’nai B’rith Center 1636 SW 13th Avenue

Brooklyn Community Club SE 13th and Center Street

Capitol Hill Community Club SW Spring Garden Road

Central Library Auditorium 801 SW 10th Avenue

City Hall, Oregon City 7th and John Adams Street, Oregon City

Collins View school 9727 SW Terwilliger Blvd.

Columbia Park Between N. Woolsey Ave & N Chautauqua

Couch school NW 20th Avenue and Glisan Street

East Side Commercial Club 615 SE Alder

Edison Six Year High school (girls) 3830 SE 14th Avenue

Edison Six Year High school (boys) 22 NE Beech

Elks Hall – Oregon City Waterfront Street, Oregon City

Elliot school 2711 NE Rodney Avenue

199

Democratic Headquarters

Doernbecher Memorial Hospital 3181 SW Marquam Road

Duniway Park SW 5th Avenue and SW Sheridan

Duniway school 7700 SE Reed College Place

Ebner Ballpark Mt. Angel, OR

Elks Temple Theatre 614 SW 11th Avenue

Girls Polytechnic school 2508 NE Everett Street

Gladstone School gymnasium Gladstone, OR

Grant Park NE 33rd Avenue and Thompson

Grout school for women (WPA) 3119 SE Holgate Street

Harmony Hall 719 SE Alder Street

Helen Kelly Manly Center 2828 SW Front Avenue

Hill Military Academy 2451 NW Marshall St. (Rocky Butte Drive)

Highway Theatre NE 52nd Avenue and Sandy Boulevard

Holladay school NE 9th Avenue and Clackamas Street

Hotel Portland 721 SW 6th Avenue

Imperial Hotel 422 SW Broadway

I.O.O.F. Odd Fellows Hall S.E. 13th and Tenino Street

I.O.O.F. Odd Fellows Hall 9212 SE Ramona

I.O.O.F Odd Fellows Building 3214 SE Holgate Street

Joseph Lane school 7200 SE 60th Avenue

Kiwanis Club, Oregon City Oregon City, OR

Lake Theatre, Oswego Lake Oswego, OR

Lents Masonic 5811 SE 92nd Ave and SE Ramona

200

Marylhurst College 3030 SW 2nd

Masonic & Eastern Star Forest Grove

Masonic Hall 3536 SE 26th Ave

Memorial Building Auditorium 13th and Broadway, Vancouver, WA

Men’s Resort 400 W. Burnside

Milwaukie Union High auditorium 22nd near the corner of Willard and Milwaukie

Moose Lodge 914 SW Yamhill Street

Mt. Scott Park NE 72nd Ave and SE Ellis

Mt. Tabor Park SE Main and SE 63rd Avenue

Multnomah County [Poor] Farm 2126 SW Halsey Street, Troutdale, OR

Multnomah Grammar school 7688 SW Capitol Highway, Multnomah, OR

Multnomah Hotel SW Pine and SW Ash between SW 3rd and SW 4th

National Guard Armory 107 NW Couch

Norse Hall 111 NE 11th Avenue

Old Concordia Club Stage SW 16th Avenue and Morrison Street

Old George Hall, Moose #247 Hillsboro

Oregon City High School Oregon City

Park Rose High school 10639 NE Prescott

Park Rose Lions Club 4812 NE 102nd Avenue

Peninsula Park N. Portland Blvd between Kerby Ave and N. Albina

Pleasant Valley Grange Foster Road

Portland Women’s Club 1220 SW Taylor

Powell Park SE Powell Blvd between SE 22nd and SE 26th Ave

Powellhurst school 2626 SE 122nd Avenue

201

Portland Municipal Auditorium SW 3rd Avenue between SW Clay & SW Market

Portland Public Market SW Front Av between SW Morrison & SW Salmon

Portland Women’s Club 1220 SW Taylor Street

Pythian Building 918 SW Yamhill

Reed College Commons 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard

Reed College Amphitheatre 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard

Roosevelt High school 6941 N. Central

Russellville Grammar school SE 102nd Avenue

Sabin schools 4013 NE 18th Avenue

Scappoose Union High school Scappoose, OR

St. Agatha Hall 7985 SE 15th Avenue

St. Helens Hall 1855 SW 13th Street

St. Mary’s Church Mt. Angel, OR

Shrine Auditorium 010 SW Gibbs

Shrine Hospital NE Sandy Blvd @ NE 82nd Avenue

South Parkway Club 3030 SW 2nd Avenue

Studio Building, 9th floor 919 SW Taylor Street

Taylor Street Theatre 919 SW Taylor Street

Tigard Union High school Tigard, OR

Tualatin Grade school Tualatin, OR

Vancouver Barracks Vancouver, WA

Vancouver Junior High Vancouver, between W. 25th and W. 26th

Vestal school NE 82nd Avenue and Glisan Street

Veterans’ Hospital 3181 S.W. Sam Jackson Park Road

202

Woodman Hall/ Temple 528 SW 11th Ave

WPA Camp Chapman Scappoose

W.O.W. Hall SE 6th and Alder

W.O.W. Temple 528 S.W. 11th Avenue

YMCA Main Auditorium 831 SW 6th Avenue and Taylor Street

YWCA Social Hall 834 SW Broadway

203

APPENDIX D

ARCHIVES

Archival Sources

Willamette Valley Heritage Center Mission Hill Museum and Marion County Historical Society Library Archives Collection Division Salem, Oregon

Oregon Historical Society Research Library Portland, Oregon

Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Archives Knight Library University of Oregon Eugene, Oregon

Special Collections and University Archives The University of Iowa Libraries Iowa City, Iowa

National Archives and Records Administration Records of the Works Progress Administration Records Group 69 Washington, D.C.

Library of Congress Music Division Federal Theatre Collection American Memory, New Deal Stage http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fedtp/

204

Archival Newsprint

California Eagle, May 18, 1939, 2B

Los Angeles Times

April 22, 1945, C5

December 16, 1945, B5.

Mount Angel News

August 13, 1936, 1

August 12, 1937, 1.

September 10, 1939, 10.

Oregon Daily Journal

July 22, 1936, 28.

July 27, 1936, 1.

December 22, 1936,12.

February 9, 1937, 10.

February 17, 1937, 11.

June 8, 1937, 14.

June 30, 1937, 6.

November 13, 1937, 5.

July 2, 1939, 2, 1.

Oregon Sunday Journal

May 30, 1937, section 4, 2.

May 30, 1937, section 4, 2.

205

July 11, 1937, sect 4, 2.

August 29, 1937, section 4, 1.

November 21, 1937, section 4, 1.

April 10, 1938, section 4, 2

April 17, 1938, section 4, 3.

January 8, 1939, 4, 3.

March 5, 1939, 4, 1.

June 25, 1939, 10

The Oregonian, August 17, 1938, 1.

Portland News Telegram,

August 5, 1936, 11.

October 24, 1936, 11.

December 2, 1936, 8.

February 15, 1937, 2.

July 7, 1937, 15.

July 13, 1937, 3.

November 8, 1937, 14.

St. Helens Sentinel-Mist, May 6, 1938, 1.

Interviews

Bess Whitcomb, interview by unnamed Diablo Valley College speech instructor, recorded c. 1975, Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, CA.

206

REFERENCES CITED

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Bradford, Roark. “The Christmas Sermon,” Esquire (December) 1936, 62.

Brown, Jared. The Fabulous Lunts: A Biography of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. New York: Atheneum, 1986.

Brown, Sterling A. “A Century of Negro Portraiture in American Literature,” The Massachusetts Review 7.1 (Winter 1966), 73-96.

Carlson, Marvin A. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Chansky, Dorothy. Composing Ourselves: The Little Theatre Movement and the American Audience. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004.

“CPI Inflation Calculator.” Division of Consumer Prices and Price Indexes. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1 =7%2C300 &year1=1939&year2=2013.

Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. London: Verso, 1998.

“Don Porter,” Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0692093/ ?ref_=fn_al_nm_1.

Erdman, Andrew L. Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals and the Mass Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2004.

Federal Theatre Project (U.S.). Highlights of the First Production Conference of the New York City Unit of the Federal Theatre. New York: Play Bureau, Federal Theatre Project, 1936.

Federal Theatre Project (U.S.), Arthur Arent, Arnold Sundgaard, and Pierre de Rohan. “Triple-A Plowed Under.” In Federal Theatre Plays 1. New York: Random House, 1938.

Federal Theatre Project (U.S.), and Pierre de Rohan. Federal Theatre: First Summer Theatre: A Report. New York: Federal National Publications, 1938.

Federal Writers' Project (OR). Oregon, End of the Trail. Portland: Binfords & Mort, 1940.

207

Flanagan, Hallie. Arena: The Story of the Federal Theatre. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940.

Flanagan, Hallie. “A Brief Delivered by Hallie Flanagan, Director, Federal Theatre Project, Works Progress Administration, before the Committee on Patents, House of Representatives: Washington, D.C. February 8, 1938.” Library of Congress American Memory. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi- bin/ampage?collId=ftadmin&fileName=farbf/00040002/ ftadmin.db&recNum=2.

Flanagan, Hallie. Instructions: Federal Theatre Projects. Washington, D.C.: Works Progress Administration, 1935.

Foulkes, Julia L. Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Fuller, Tom and Art Ayre. Oregon at Work: 1859-2009. Portland: Ooligan Press, 2009.

Furay, Conal. The Grass-roots Mind in America: The American Sense of Absolutes. New York: New Viewpoints, 1977.

Harvard Law Review. “The Judiciary Act of 1937.” 51.1 (Nov. 1937), 148-149.

Jeszeck, Charles A. “Testimony Before the Special Committee on Aging, U.S. Senate. Unemployed Older Workers, Many Face Long-Term Joblessneess and Reduced Retirement Security.” U.S. Government Accountability Office. http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/590882.pdf.

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Langner, Lawrence and Armina Marshall. The Pursuit of Happiness, An American Comedy. New York: S. French, 1934.

Laughed, W. B. Paul Bunyan and His Big Blue Ox: Their Marvelous Exploits. Westwood, CA: Red River Lumber Company, 1944.

Lewis, Robert M. From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830-1910. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

MacColl, E. Kimbark. The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon, 1915-1950. Portland, Or: Georgian Press, 1979.

208

Maher, Neil M. Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Margarida, Alice. “Two ‘Shrews’: Productions by Lunt/Fontanne (1935) and H. K. Ayliff (1927).” The Drama Review: TDR 25.2 (1981), 87-100.

Matson, Cecil. The Way It Was: A Kaleidoscopic Look at Early Theatre in the Oregon Country and A View of the Changing Pattern of Theatre in the Early Years of the Twentieth Century into the Present Day. Portland, Or.: printed by author, 1988.

Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

“New Deal Stage: Production Notebook from Portland production of Power.” Library of Congress American Memory. Box 1057. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi- bin/ampage?collId=ftp&fileName=fprpt/1057/10570011/ftp10570011page.db&re cNum=0.

Nugent, J.C. It's a Great Life. New York: Dial Press, 1940.

Oregon Experiment Station. Cost in Fiber Flax Production in the Willamette Valley Oregon. Oregon State System of Higher Education, 1938.

Osborne, Elizabeth. “Disappearing Frontiers and the National Stage: Placing the Portland Federal Theatre Project.” Theatre History Studies 29 (2009), 103-121.

Osborne, Elizabeth A. Staging the People: Community and Identity in the Federal Theatre Project. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Papers of Edward Charles Mabie, Box 2, Federal Theatre Project, Bess Whitcomb, RG 99.0188, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Iowa.

Portland Civic Theatre Records, “Minutes 1938-9”, Mss 2965, 3/15, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

Postlewait, Thomas. The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Rice, Elmer. “Councilor at Law.” Plays. London: Gollancz, 1933. Rogers, Will, Arthur Frank Wertheim, Barbara Bair, Steven K. Gragert, and M. Jane Johansson. The Papers of Will Rogers. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.

Roosevelt, Franklin D. “Address at Bonneville Dam, Oregon (September 28, 1937).” The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid= 15469.

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Roosevelt, Franklin D. “Annual Message to Congress (1/4/1935).” The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14890.

“Rosalie,” Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029499/fullcredits? ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast..

Rourke, Constance. American Humor: A Study of the National Character. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1931.

S.D., Trav. No Applause-Just Throw Money. New York: Faber and Faber, 2005.

Schlick, Frederick. Bloodstream: A Play in Three Acts. Boston: Walter H. Baker Company, 1934.

Schlick, Frederick. The Yellow Harvest, National Archives and Records Administration, E917, Box 355, quoted in Osborne, Elizabeth A. Staging the People: Community and Identity in the Federal Theatre Project. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Stein, Charles W. American Vaudeville As Seen By Its Contemporaries. New York: Knopf, 1984.

Stevens, James and Allen Lewis. Paul Bunyan. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1925.

Toll, Robert C. On With the Show!: The First Century of Show Business in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

U.S. Census Report, 1940, Bureau of the Census, 964.

Waldau, Roy S. Vintage Years of the Theatre Guild, 1928-1939. Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1972.

Whitcomb, Bess. “An Analysis of the Background and Directing Methods in the Production of Robert Sherwood's Abe Lincoln in Illinois.” Master’s thesis, University of Iowa, 1941.

Whitcomb, Bess. Interview by unnamed Diablo Valley College speech instructor. Recorded c. 1975. Diablo Valley College.

Whitman, Willson. Bread and Circuses: A Study of Federal Theatre. New York: Oxford University Press, 1937.

Witham, Barry. The Federal Theatre Project: A Case Study. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

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